Theft 33
by Mackiecam
Summary: After being caught in a bank robbery, Steph and the Rangeman team assist Morelli to look into the man's background, and they find out that it isn't as simple as it appears... Total babe and posted at minimum of 3 x per week and often more
1. Chapter 1

_The following story is a work of fiction_ _that features characters developed by Janet Evanovich. No money has been earned through writing this story. Any similarities to real events or persons are entirely coincidental. _

_Although a stand-alone, this book builds upon the previous books in my series. Because it is a stand-alone, however, there is a lot of review in the first chapter and a lot of explanation of how I have changed the characters and storylines from JE's. I know some people find that a bit tedious. f you are sensitive to that and don't want the review, feel free to skip reading the first chapter. _

_The first book is a bit cupcake-y, but the rest are pure babes and develop the relationships between the characters. For maximum enjoyment, I suggest that you read them in the following order:_

_22 Caliber_

_Trigger Happy 23 _

_Morelli's Argument 23.5_

_Ranger 23.75_

_Threatening 24_

_Fixation 25_

_Security 26_

_Sneaky 27_

_Date Night at the Movies 27.1_

_Meeting Maria 27.2_

_The Intervention 27.3_

_Envious 28_

_Dickie's Demise 28.1_

_Mob Matters 28.2_

_Altercation at Giovichinni's 28.3_

_Numbskull 29_

_Toxic 30_

_Obit 31_

_Tamper 32_

_In recognition of the fact that I'm a binge reader and don't personally like to wait for updates, I will try to post at a minimum at nights on a Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday schedule (although it could be on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, depending upon where you live in the world), barring unseen life events. However, in the past I have periodically posted extra chapters to celebrate achieving some personal milestone – or just because I like the way the sun is shining that day – so you might want to watch for those. Since I do that relatively frequently, if you are enjoying the story you might want to follow it rather than continually check back._

_Reviews, as always, are greatly appreciated. I have a few people who regularly review for me, and I'd like to thank you for that. Your reviews have given me the confidence to write another story. As a thank you for leaving reviews, for every 25 reviews I generally post an extra chapter on top of my three times per week schedule. I appreciate all reviews and try to respond to each and every one. Please note that I cannot respond to reviews that have been posted by guests. _

_Thank you for reading my story. I hope you enjoy it!_

_~ Sarah ~_

**Chapter One**

I rolled over and stretched and let myself wake up slowly. This was the first time I'd been able to sleep past eight in over a week, and I was glad for the extra sleep. I had been especially tired lately. My name is Stephanie Plum, and I was twelve weeks pregnant.

I wasn't tired just because of the pregnancy, however. I was also tired because I had just completed an intense period at work although, to be honest, the intense period didn't seem to be abating. I had two jobs. In the first, as a bounty hunter for Vincent Plum Bail Bonds, I was responsible for capturing those who had skipped bail. When a person got arrested, the majority of time the person was awarded the opportunity to make bail, the paying of money to guarantee that they'd show up for their court date. When they showed up at court, their money was returned to them.

However, many times the accused didn't have enough money to pay the bail, but since jails weren't nice places they didn't want to wait in jail until their court date arrived. That was where a bail bonds company came in. For the price of fifteen percent of the bond and the donation of some collateral, the accused was lent the money to pay their bail. When they showed up in court, the collateral was returned to them but the fifteen percent wasn't.

However, the bail bond was not returned to the bondsman if the accused didn't show up in court, which made the bondsman a little cranky. Without that money returned, he was unable to lend that money out to another accused and earn another fifteen percent. When that happened, he sent out a bounty hunter – that's me – to collect the accused and return them to the system. When the accused was captured again the bail bonds company got their money back, the accused was awarded bail at a higher value, and the whole process started again. Some people went through the process several times before they couldn't afford to do anything other than to show up for court.

When the bondsman had to send out a bounty hunter to retrieve the accused, he gave the bounty hunter ten percent of the price of the bond and kept the remaining five percent of the bond fee for himself. At times it was quite lucrative – but at other times it wasn't, and that's why I had the second job as a researcher for Rangeman, a private security company that did all things security-wise, from skip tracing to cybersecurity to system design, installation and monitoring, to personal security through providing bodyguards to onside security through the training and provision of security guards. It was a small company but growing rapidly. There were two offices, the head office in Trenton where I worked and a satellite office in Miami.

As researcher, I was responsible for a few different tasks. The first was a marketing role. When Rangeman was interested in taking on a client, I would research the company or individual so that Rangeman could target their sales pitch effectively. The second role was in system design and maintenance. When the client was signed on, I researched each of the company's employees to search for security risks. Then, once the company was up and running, I researched any future employees to identify any security risks. I did all that while using our in-house designed search engine, In-Spect, an incredibly invasive program that could find out everything from the date, minute and second you were born to what you ate for dinner the night before. It was shockingly scary how much the program could find out. I should know. I ran my own name through the program and was horrified to see how much information – and what information – the program was able to bring up on me. I hadn't even known everything it had found out and had to confirm details with my mother. The only person I hadn't been able to bring up anything on was Ranger, the owner and CEO of Rangeman and my fiancé. He was a ghost.

But that wasn't all I did for Rangeman. I had recently started to consult for both the Trenton Police Department and the Newark Police Division to provide information on potential suspects through using our In-Spect program. This was a popular service and we were getting a number of research inquiries. It had started out with a couple of research requests for the TPD but had now progressed to four inquiries, on average, each week. Newark was a more recent addition. We had only signed them on three days before, but already we had seven names to research for them. Now that they knew we were there, they wanted to use us to the utmost.

On top of all that work, I used my bounty-hunting experience to create capture plans for skips. For those skips who were too dangerous or would require too much of my time to capture myself, I turned all those captures over to Rangeman. Patrol staff picked up the skips and returned them to the system. Vinnie, the bondsman I worked for, liked this new process. Unlike me, Rangeman was incredibly efficient at capturing skips. Because this system worked so well, Rangeman had more recently picked up the captures of another bondsman, Les Sebring. We currently were creating capture plans for seven of his skips.

I had been splitting my time between capturing skips and research up until I found out that I was pregnant. But because it wasn't unheard of for me to roll around of the ground with a skip while I was trying to cuff them – and that was one of the tamer things that had happened to me – Ranger and I had decided that it would be better for me to focus on the research part of my job and let Rangeman pick up all my skips.

Ranger, or Ricardo Carlos Manoso, and I were due to be married in another two months and were expecting our baby in another six. It felt like everything was falling into place for us, and we couldn't be happier. Our baby, our marriage, even Ranger's company was going well. Rangeman was growing astronomically. In the last year alone we had gone from a staff of about a hundred and twenty to just under two hundred, and Ranger predicted that his staff would double by the end of the next. Ranger was signing clients on faster than he could staff them, and that created a problem. Rangeman was known for the skill of their staff, and they were having trouble finding enough staff who had the requisite level of skill and training. Ranger had a mandate of hiring only male vets, but with his need for staff being so great he has had to open up his hiring practices. He still preferred vets for his Operations staff but was now hiring female vets, and he still only accepted those that were in Special Operations for his Emergency Response Teams. However, he had started hiring non-military personnel – male and female – for his security guards and administrative and support staff. He was a little concerned about it, but I think the shift was necessary. With the growth in his company, he wouldn't be able to recruit just vets. There were only so many vets retiring and looking for jobs at any one time, and that number was lessened even further when you only looked at vets who were interested in living in Trenton, New Jersey. I was pleased that Ranger was opening up his required qualifications. It was the only way I thought we'd be able to get enough feet on the ground.

It was also important because Ranger had a problem. His company was not diversified in his hiring practices. With having a clientele that encompassed the FBI, the CIA, the DEA, the Secret Service, the TPD and the Newark police and other governmental agencies, it seemed imperative to me that his company became more inclusive in its hiring practices. His company already practiced racial and religious equality. They just now had to practice gender equality as well. I understood why his Emergency Response Teams all needed to be Special Operations. Since there were very few – if any – females who were part of the Special Operations in military, that meant that his ERTs were all male as well. Since his ERTs had to be trained to do everything from hostage negotiation to search and rescues, extractions to attacks, requiring Special Operations training made sense. But requiring a security guard to be male didn't make sense. There were many badass women out there who would do a good job as a security guard and should, consequently, be offered the role. Similarly, there were some roles that were better to be female for – like our recent hire of a new bodyguard, who because of her gender would be excellent at guarding female clients – and there were some roles that it honestly didn't matter. Roles in the administrative and support areas of the company often didn't matter whether the employee was male or female, and as such the company was in the process of hiring a female recruitment and retention staff member and was looking at hiring a female lawyer. Of course, the recruitment and retention staffer was being hired from the Recruitment Office from the Army, and the lawyer was being hired out of JAG, so they both had military experience. However, the point was that they were both female and that could only do good things for the company to have them on staff.

I think Ranger was coming around to that line of thinking as well. Our existing office building was bursting at the seams with all the extra staff, and in another three months Ranger would be breaking ground on a new tower so that he could move part of his operation over. The new office tower would have a new gym and pool in it – with both male and female change rooms. We currently only had a male change room in our existing gym. Since up until about a week ago, I was the only female Operations staff member and since the only other female on staff was Ella, our housekeeper and resident mom and she wasn't interested in using the gym, the lack of female change room was a moot point.

I was looking forward to having more females on staff. While I got along with the guys well and looked upon them as brothers, it would be nice to have some sisters as well. I had been greatly enjoying having the female bodyguard, Amelia, on staff and had eaten lunches with her several times in the last week. She was a lovely person – so nice, in fact, and I got along with her so well that I had raised the idea with Ranger that we hire her to be a nanny. She would still remain on the Rangeman staff, but would simply be responsible for guarding and caring for our baby. This made sense for her, because she had told me that her dream job would be to work in a daycare. She adored kids and, with my encouragement, had started college and was taking courses for her certificate in early childhood education.

Having a trained bodyguard look after our baby made sense. Although Ranger was only thirty-three, he had done a lot in his past. As a US Army Ranger, he had been part of the team that had transported the deceased Osama bin Laden to the US Naval ship for burial at sea. This action upset the al-Qaeda, and all the members of the SEAL team that had eliminated Osama bin Laden and the members of the Ranger transportation team had been targeted. After a couple of people had been killed, the US government responded by erasing all links of the soldiers and seamen to the mission. Ranger had gone a step further and asked the army to create an alternate identity for him when he retired, an identity that was bland and didn't say much. Although he admitted to being a Ranger to family and friends, his official history was that he was a college graduate that had taken business courses instead of being in the army. It had confused me for a long time that I had never been able to pull up information on the Ranger I knew. I now know that was done on purpose. The Ranger who had done so much had been eliminated. He had all new identification – even a new social security number.

So, if I searched for him on the internet as a soldier, I would come up with nothing. There would be no record of the special medals that he had earned, no record of the missions he had undertaken. If I searched for him as graduate from Douglass College, I would find that he had done well in his business courses – but the rest of his history was clean and didn't have any data. A driver's license that hadn't had any speeding or parking tickets associated with it. Rental of an apartment. For years, as he was establishing his company, his official mailing address was to a vacant lot. He had since built his office on that lot – but it confused a lot of people for a long time. If I looked at his social security number and tracked him that way, it would tell of a fairly innocuous history. He had set up his life like a secret CIA agent and it was a hard life to unravel.

It was not only his association with that mission that caused Ranger to be so careful. He also, unknown to anyone other than his right-hand man and myself, was a trainer for PMC, Private Military Contractors. This company was contracted by the government to do all the shit jobs that the government either didn't think success was possible in, or that they wanted an arm's-length away from. With Ranger's Latino coloring and fluency in Spanish, he was a natural to work in the War on Drugs. He had led several raids into the compounds of drug lords to shut down their operations and was consequently on their hit lists. Eventually he was on too many hit lists and it became too dangerous for him to continue to go on raids. However, he was still the best in the business and PMC wanted to keep him on staff. With being their trainer, the company was happy that he continued to have an association with them and Ranger was happy to have more of an arm's length from the company. Although he believed in what he did and he was proud of the work that he'd done in his past, now that he was starting a family he thought that arm's length away from their business would work to protect me from all the people who would like to see him – and everyone he loved – dead.

So there was some danger to me to be associated with Ranger, and to help me be safe Ranger had instilled several safety precautions. First, Ranger had bought me a watch and asked me to never take it off. Inside the watch was a tracking device and the watch was monitored 24/7 from the Rangeman control room. No one, other than a few handfuls of people, knew that I wore this safety feature.

On the watch was a panic button. I could engage that panic button at any time and Rangeman would know that I was in danger. I'd had the watch for about six months and had to use the panic button a handful of times. Although I knew that it was fairly silly to be relieved to know that help was so close by, I found it comforting. I think Ranger found it comforting as well.

Ranger had made other changes as well. For instance, my car. What I could afford to drive was a rust bucket that had several dents and scrapes. But since, in the land of leased cars, this made me too visible, Ranger had switched the car that I drove to one that was commonly seen on the road and was in a condition that would blend in. That car had a tracking device on it which again was monitored by the Rangeman control room. For that matter, my purse had a tracking device in it as well.

Other precautions were small. I had to dress in a way that blended in. I had to style my hair and wear makeup that helped me blend in. I had to conduct myself in a way that blended in. None of that was a problem – except for the way I conducted myself. Me, myself, wasn't an issue. Aside from having some rather colorful skips, my habits were relatively bland. However, I had a few people in my life who weren't.

The first of those people was my grandmother. She was over forty years older than me, stoop-shouldered and cloudy-eyed with cataracts. She had thinning white sausage curls marching across her pink scalp and a lot of retired muscle. In attitude, she was far younger than her years and had a zest for life and a penchant for getting into trouble. She frequently dyed her hair different colors, matched her hair to her lipstick and nail polish, and wore skintight clothing that made her look just this side of trashy. She preferred to carry her gun, Elsie, in her purse unless she was going to the funeral home – at which time she exchanged her gun for her crow bar so that she could pry the lids of closed coffins up for a little look-see. She had an obsession for seeing dead bodies and a nose for gossip. She was not the kind of grandmother who stayed at home to knit blankets for the homeless or to crochet new hats and scarves for each of her grandkids for Christmas. She was, and always would be, a character who frequently made me laugh – but was also one who would never blend in.

Another person in my life who had a vibrant personality was Lula. Connie and Lula were two of my friends who work at the bonds office. Connie Rosolli was the office manager and looked like Betty Boop on steroids. She had the hourglass figure that many women only dreamed of, and the dark hair and mustache of the truly Italian. She was related to the mob and brought in a lot of business to the bonds office because of it, and could out-fight and out-gun the majority of Trenton residents. She was a good person to have on your side, and I was pleased to say that she'd been on my side since I had started in the company.

Lula was my other friend who worked at the bonds office. A former hooker, her occupation had changed to file clerk for the office when a john seriously injured her. Her wardrobe had not kept up to the change in profession. She was a plus-sized woman who regularly wore petite-sized clothing, and her fondness for spandex, sequins and shiny fabrics was legendary. She regularly changed her hair, nail and makeup color to match her wardrobe. Her personality was just as loud as her appearance. It would be impossible for her to blend in, and just being with her ruined any attempts for me to go incognito as well. Like my grandmother, she made me laugh, but also like my grandmother, she was a character that craved attention and, when I was with her, I was unable to stay in the shadows.

I was scheduled to have lunch with Connie and Lula in an hour. We were meeting about an hour before lunch so that we could exchange Christmas gifts. With it only being another six days until Christmas, this would probably be the last time I saw them before the holidays. I was also planning on telling them of my pregnancy. I hadn't told them because Ranger and I had decided to wait until my first trimester was up. We weren't sure, for a while, whether the pregnancy would stick. We had been keeping the knowledge of the baby secret to give us each time to acclimatize ourselves to the concept of having a baby but, when I almost lost the baby a few weeks ago, we wanted to keep it quiet so that we weren't inundated with comments and concern.

Ranger and I had never wanted children. Ranger already had a daughter, a thirteen-year old named Julie, and he didn't want to have another. He purposely kept a distance away from Julie so that she wasn't put into danger, but in doing so he decided that he wasn't a good father and didn't deserve children. However, he was a great father who just decided not to play a big part in Julie's life. His ex, Rachel, and her new husband were dedicated parents to Julie, and Ranger had always felt a bit superfluous.

Julie, however, has been changing his mind. When Ranger and I got together about six months ago, he talked to Julie about me. And when I moved in three months ago, and realized that I was pregnant a month later, Julie saw her chance for a closer relationship with her father. She had asked, now that I was on the scene, whether she'd be able to have a closer relationship with him. For Thanksgiving, she had been invited to stay for a few days at Ranger's apartment – something she had never been invited to do before – and she was coming back again for a few days over the Christmas holidays. She was thrilled, and so were Ranger and I. Ranger had never realized that Julie wanted to be with him or that she cared for him, and he was stunned to find out that she did.

Ranger lived in an apartment that was just over three thousand square feet in size, but when the new tower was built we were planning on moving to the penthouse suite in the new tower and our apartment would grow to almost seven thousand square feet. Included in that space would be a bedroom suite for Julie, a bedroom suite for the baby, the master, two other bedroom suites, a nanny's suite, a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, a family room, an office each for Ranger and myself, a sunroom, a laundry room and a large wrap-around belvedere. I loved Ranger's current apartment. I thought I would adore his new home, although I wasn't sure what we would do with all the space.

The new tower, in addition to housing our new apartment on the seventh floor, would also have a three thousand-square foot apartment for Ella and Luis, our resident housekeeper and her husband, the custodian for the buildings, and another for Tank, Ranger's right-hand man and Vice-President of Operations, on the sixth floor. On floors two to five would be one-bedroom apartments for each member of the ERTs, one team per floor, so that staff would be onsite while they were on-call. Ranger required staff to have a ten-minute response time from call-out to the start to any potential mission, and living onsite helped with this requirement. The new gym and pool were to be located on the first floor.

With all the residences moving to the new tower, the existing seven stories were going to be renovated and changed from a combination of office and residential space to just office space. The penthouse – Ranger's and my current apartment – would become a guest suite. In preparation for that, his one-bedroom had been changed into a three-bedroom with a separate office. This was to be a surprise for Julie, as when she came over the Christmas holidays she would have her own room. Ella's and Luis's apartment on the sixth floor would be turning into a staff lounge. The Operations floor, currently on the fifth, was expanding into the fourth. The Administrative and Support floor, currently on the second floor, was expanding into the third, and the gym on the main floor was going to be subdivided into a large boardroom and several smaller conference rooms. The work spaces were basically doubling in size, and the expansion could not come soon enough. Currently, people were having to share space and work in conference rooms and, with constantly tripping over each other, people were getting a little frustrated and grumpy. I personally could hardly wait. The research department was currently a small office that had been designed when it was just me working on the desk, but now that I had one and a half staff members working with me and another half-staff member on the way, our office was too small for the number of people sharing the space. Dirk, our full-time staff member, had taken over my desk and Miguel, our part-time staff member, was perched on the other side and working out of a guest chair. I usually worked in our home office, but when I wanted to be closer I worked out of Ranger's conference table in his office. I had commandeered a boardroom when we were first training Dirk, but he had quickly learned how to fly on his own and now could work effectively with only Miguel's part-time support. I didn't know where I'd put the new person when they started, but since they will be working part-time for me and part-time for Leo in Cybersecurity, I was hoping that Leo would have a space for them.

Miguel was an effective researcher that had been doing the job for a long time. He was, in fact, the person who had taught me the basics on how to do research in the first place. However, he hated research and when the opportunity came up for him to do patrol, he jumped at the chance. He has since settled into doing patrol for half the day and research for the other half, and this split in responsibilities seemed to be working for him. It was also working for us. Miguel was good at doing research and I would hate to see him leave the department.

Dirk was a new addition to the team. He had also come from a military background and had been a staff member who had been doing patrol. However, his education was in accounting and we thought we could use it. While he had taken to research like a duck to water, his specialty was in corporate analysis. He could make sense of all the financial spreadsheets that I didn't truly understand. I was better at the investigation of individuals.

I was a nosy person who liked finding out people's secrets. However, although I had a working knowledge of the internet and could do the basics, Leo, head of Cybersecurity, had given me a couple of days of lessons on information gathering. I loved my increased knowledge and comfort in finding out secrets. While Leo could hack into any system, what he taught me didn't cross over the line into illegality. It came close, but it didn't cross over. I now thought that there was little that I couldn't find out. Dirk had started just a few days ago, but I was slowly teaching him some of the tricks that Leo had taught me.

I wouldn't be teaching Dirk much that day. After exchanging presents with Connie and Lula, I was taking them out – with one of our former skips, Willy Fish – for a Christmas lunch. Willy was a great old man who had been arrested for running down the street, naked as a jay bird, wearing a red pair of heels and yelling, "I'm free". He didn't go to court because he said that he didn't have much time left and he didn't want to waste his time in jail. Lula and I picked him up and took him out for lunch on the way to the jailhouse. He bonded out again, and this time purposely missed his date just so that Lula and I would pick him up. Since we saw this as an emerging pattern – and because we liked him – we told him that, if he were to go to court when he was supposed to, we'd take him out once a month just to spend time with him. So he went to court and was given community time reading to children, a practice that he had enjoyed so much that he continued doing it even now that his community time was completed, and we've been taking Willy out for lunch on the third last Thursday of the month ever since. He was a lot of fun and Lula and I enjoyed our time with him immensely.

Today would be the first time that Connie accompanied us. She had only briefly met Willy when she had bonded him out, but she had heard many stories about him and was pleased to be spending time with him. I figured that, if he liked Lula's stories about being a hooker, he would also enjoy Connie's stories about being a member of the mob. It was sure to be a fun lunch, and I was looking forward to it.

Just as long as I was able to keep my lunch down. The morning sickness was receding a bit, and I was often only feeling extremely nauseous. I could keep some liquids down in the morning and could eat lightly by the afternoon and into the evening. This was far better than a month ago, when it wouldn't matter what time of the day it was, I would have problems eating anything. It had made it challenging to hide my pregnancy and, as such, I hadn't been at the bonds office for weeks.


	2. Chapter 2

I parked behind the bonds office, gathered my gift bags and walked into the bonds office. I had three bags – one each for Connie, Lula and Vinnie. For Connie I had purchased a gold cuff bracelet that I thought she would like, for Lula I had purchased a Tile Mate so that she would be less likely to lose her keys, and for Vinnie I bought a t-shirt with the slogan 'I'm the crazy cousin that everyone warns you about'. I didn't normally get him a present, but it was so appropriate that I couldn't resist.

Connie and Lula looked up at me with wide smiles on their faces. "Merry Christmas", said Lula with a grin. "This is my favorite time of the year."

"Why's that?" I said.

"I have a lot of elf costumes that I can wear when I'm out with my honeys, and they just don't make the same sense when I wear them in July. Besides, all that fake fur is too hot for any time other than during the winter."

"Do you have any honeys right now?" I said.

Connie groaned.

"I did have a honey", said Lula with a grimace. "I thought he was the one. But he borrowed my car without asking me. I was sleeping and he stole my keys and took my baby to the grocery store to buy me some ice cream for breakfast. I mean, who steals someone's car without asking the owner whether it would be okay to do so?"

"He was buying you ice cream for breakfast?"

"Yeah. He said it was cherry ice cream, so it was healthy. It had fruit and dairy in it."

"He sounds like the perfect person."

"I thought he was, until he stole my car. I threw him out of my apartment as soon as he gave me my keys back. But I took the ice cream from him before I threw him out. I may not be smart, but I'm not stupid. He bought the good kind made with real cream."

"If he apologized for borrowing your car, would you take him back?"

"I don't know. I liked him and he didn't mind that I was a big, beautiful woman. He said he liked my assets. But he was a little guy, if you know what I mean. I didn't think that it was a problem, because he knew he was little and he worked hard to ensure his size wasn't a problem. But that was about a month ago, when we first got together. After we'd been together for a few weeks, he wasn't as interested in making up for his size and things weren't as satisfying as they had been before."

"Small size really makes a difference?" I said.

"According to Grandma, you wouldn't know. It's not like you'd tell us." She looked at me hopefully, and I smiled and shook my head. She sighed. "Most men with a small size try to make up for it and are actually better lovers than those who are arrogant about their size. After all, a woman needs more than a slam, bam, thank you ma'am if they are to have a good time. They need a little tickle as well."

I didn't say it, but I had never had the problem of a man not giving me a little tickle. Besides my ex-husband, who needed to do more than give me a little tickle to get me in the mood, I had never had a partner who hadn't been dedicated to my enjoyment and who hadn't reveled in tickling me. I knew how lucky I was.

Vinnie walked into the office as he rubbed his hands together to try to warm them. "Hey, Steph", he said. "Are you ready for Christmas?"

"Yes", I said. "I did a lot of my purchasing over the internet this year. It saved me going shopping personally."

"I saw you and Grandma Mazur on the television last week", said Vinnie.

I groaned. Grandma and my sister, Valerie, and I had gone to Santa's Village to have Val's and my picture taken on Santa's knee. We thought as a bit of a joke we would give it to our mother for Christmas. However, we got our turn to go onto Santa's knee just as a protest started, and my grandmother thought that the protest looked like a lot of fun. She jumped into protesting with both feet and, when mall security came, all the protesters scattered and left my grandmother holding the megaphone.

That wouldn't have been so bad if my grandmother had just gone with mall security when they asked her. However, she refused and mall security tried to capture her and take her forcefully. She jumped out of the way, broke a candy cane off the display and used it as a sword to bat the guard away. I let her have her fun for a few minutes until I took control of the situation.

It could have ended badly, but it turned out that the mall security supervisor was a skip that I had taken in several times and therefore knew quite well. He let us off with the promise that we would stay away from Santa's Village for the remainder of the season. My grandmother was happy with the whole situation since she had been able to get Santa's phone number. She had been out on a couple of successful dates with him – largely successful because he brought her candy canes when he came. My sister was happy because she had already been able to get a picture with Santa for her five kids. Tony, the supervisor, was happy because I had been able to tell him that Rangeman was hiring and I said that I would put in a good word for him. And I was happy because we weren't charged with public mischief. While I knew Ranger would pay the bail for me, I wasn't so sure that he would pay the bail for my grandmother, and I didn't think her social security checks were large enough to cover bail as well as all the Christmas presents.

Who was I kidding? He would pay bail for my grandmother. He was a hard man with a soft heart, and although he was often seen as uncompromising, he did a lot of good for people behind the scenes. He did it because he felt it was the right thing to do rather than because he wanted accolades and that made his actions all the more impressive.

"It all ended well", I said. "Tony didn't call the police, and Val and I were able to corral my grandmother and direct her to finishing her shopping. She is now done, and doesn't have to go back to the mall again."

"What was she protesting?" asked Connie. "All I saw was the 'psycho grandma goes ballistic in Santa's Village' headline. I don't think the news actually said why your grandmother was going crazy."

"There were a group of black Santas protesting the fact that the role as Santa was never given to them because they were black. My grandmother took it a step farther and was protesting the racial, gender and age inequality of their hiring practices. She had a valid point and by making that point she made the black Santas look a little foolish – especially when the black Santas were horrified by the thought that there might be a female Santa, or that the mall might hire a teenager into the role."

"Is it true they are making a song with your grandmother in it?" said Vinnie.

"They are. It's going to play on the phrase that is being attributed to her but that she didn't even say, which was 'hell, no. We won't wear bells, we won't be elves.' They are treating it to the same sort of songwriting as 'ain't nobody got time for that' that went viral a few years ago. My grandmother is ecstatic and has already tried to get her hair salon to give her cuts to her for free, just to have my grandmother in the shop. She said that she'll promote the salon when she is walking the red carpet. I've tried to tell her that she probably won't be walking the red carpet at all, that this is a one-hit wonder, and the people who will be making money on this will be the producers, not her. My grandmother, however, is convinced that she will soon be interviewed on Entertainment Tonight. It is hard to dissuade her without breaking her spirit."

"I can see why Grandma wants to walk the red carpet", said Lula. "I'd want to walk the red carpet as well. I would buy a new pair of shoes for it. Those real, genuine Lubbutins that I bought a few months ago fell apart. I thought, with them being Lubbutins, they would last. After all, the original Louboutins lasted, so why didn't the Lubbutins? They were probably made by the same people."

"I guess that's why we didn't have to pay much for the shoes", I said. Grandma and I had bought shoes at the same time as Lula had bought hers, and ours had lasted much better than Lula's. "We were buying knock-off designer shoes for bargain basement prices. You could tell that they weren't real. They weren't even made from real leather."

"But they did have the red soles", said Lula. "If you didn't look closely, you would have sworn that they were real Louboutins."

"That's true", I said. "They were comfortable shoes." I handed Lula, Connie and Vinnie their presents. Vinnie looked at his in surprise. "I know we don't normally exchange gifts", I said, "but I saw this and thought of you, and I couldn't resist. It isn't a big thing."

Vinnie smiled, opened his present, read the shirt and laughed. "I'll have to wear that to Christmas dinner with the family", he said. And that was one of the reasons I liked Vinnie. He was a bit of a weasel and was a sexual pervert. He was the kind of person that made you want to wash your hand after you shook his. But he had a good sense of humor and was lovable in his own awkward way, and I knew he probably would wear that shirt to the family Christmas.

Connie opened her present next. She loved her bracelet and immediately put it on. It looked good with the leopard print scarf she was wearing around her neck.

Lula opened her present next. I had to explain to her what the tile was for, but when she understood what I was giving her she loved the present. We then had an office-wide search for Lula's keys so that we could attach the Tile Mate. Since it took us a few minutes to find her keys, I thought that the gift was an apt one.

"I have some news", I said as Connie and Lula handed me their presents and they each opened the presents from the other person.

"What's that?" said Lula, a smile on her face as she found a subscription to the National Enquirer.

"There's been a reason I haven't been capturing skips, above and beyond the fact that I am frantically busy. I'm pregnant."

Connie and Lula dropped their gifts and squealed, and Vinnie smiled. "Congratulations, Steph", he said. "That must make your family happy."

"I think they are", I said, "although my mother had slowed down in her requests to quit skip tracing now that she knows that Rangeman does all the dangerous skips."

"It's been good for business", said Vinnie. "Our turnaround time is faster than it has ever been. You do the best capture plans, and your capture plans enable the Rangeman staff to quickly capture the skips. We are often capturing skips within two days of them missing court. It's been great for the bonds office."

"When is the baby due?" asked Connie.

"How have you been feeling?" asked Lula.

"The baby is due June 28th and I've been feeling very sick", I said. I told them about almost losing the baby just a few weeks before and being put on bed rest. "I think I'm in the clear now. The doctor says the peanut looks very healthy and happy in there, so I'm still being careful but I'm back to regular duties. I'm so busy right now that even though I'm trying not to work overtime I am still putting in a lot of hours. Ranger is really growing the Research department and the Sales department is marketing our services to do due diligence analysis for companies interested in corporate purchases. I now have one full-time staff member working for me and another half-time staff member and, soon, there will be another part-time employee added to my staff."

"I should apply", said Lula. "I could research the shit out of those companies."

"The people we are hiring onto the Research department are more trained than me in their jobs. The full-time person we just hired is an accountant and skilled at reading all those spreadsheets on the companies. The part-time person we are planning on hiring we want to have a computer science background, and we want them to be able to hit the ground running with the computer searches. A hacker would be ideal. The part-time person we have currently is Miguel, and he taught me quite a lot in how to go about researching companies and individuals."

"So is there anything that I could do for Rangeman?" said Lula. "This job is getting boring with you being gone. Maybe I could do captures?"

"I thought you'd be happy not having to do surveillance in the cold", I said.

Lula smiled. "There is that."

"And I'm not there to eat all your doughnuts from the Tasty Pastry."

"That's true", she said.

"And you don't have to mess up your hair standing in the sleet."

"That's true. Besides, what would Vinnie and Connie do if I weren't here to file all the folders?"

I looked at the large pile of folders that were waiting to be filed. "I don't know", I said.

"Connie and Vinnie would be bored without me here", she said.

"That's true", I said.

She smiled. "I'm in the best spot possible for me", she said.

"Besides, after the baby is born I will continue to take in the easy skips again. People like Willy, the regulars and the easy captures. I just won't take in the murderers or the terrorists or the felons who have known vendettas against bounty hunters. I also miss it."

"So the dynamic duo will ride again?"

"Yes, we will. In another ten months – six months more for the pregnancy and four months for my maternity leave. In the meantime, I will still go out for lunch with Willy and you, but that will be all I do for skip tracing over the next ten months."

"I still don't see why you take him out for lunch rather than letting us bond him out again", said Vinnie.

"Vinnie", I said, "Willy didn't have enough money to keep paying a bond, and the next time we took him in he would have to stay in jail. To be honest, he's a kind old man who doesn't deserve that. We're just doing our part in keeping him living a life on the straight and narrow."

Vinnie shook his head. "As much as I don't like the practice, it has worked well for us. We are known as the bondsman with a heart, and people use our services because of it. Your tendency to make sure that people have been fed prior to taking them into jail mixed with your general humanity in working with the skips has meant that we have a lot of repeat business. We have become the bondsman of choice. Harry the Hammer is very happy." Harry the Hammer was the owner of the bonds office. He was a former enforcer for the mob and was Vinnie's father-in-law. While he was remarkably accepting of Vinnie's sexual proclivities and regular extracurricular activity, Vinnie's wife Lucille regularly reminded Vinnie that her father was the one that was paying her husband his salary. It didn't make for a comfortable situation for Vinnie, but as he had often said, being a bondsman was what he knew and was what he was good at, and if that was the only way he could be a bondsman, then he would accept Harry owning the bonds office.

"I'm glad he is happy", I said. "But Lula and I don't capture skips that way to make him happy. We do it because it is the right thing to do."

"Rangeman is picking up skips the same way", said Vinnie.

"Ranger and Tank have told staff to submit expenses for all food and other expenses that they incur in capturing skips. They don't act that way with all skips, but they do with those skips who treat them well. Their new motto is 'respect returned'. The guys have told me that it's a much nicer way of capturing skips."

"Open my present", said Lula.

I lifted a gift bag and carefully pulled out the tissue, folded it, then pulled out a wrapped parcel. I carefully peeled back the tape and saved the paper – not because I was planning on using the paper again, but rather because I knew it would tick Lula off. She was far too impatient to have the ability to withstand such torture.

"Just rip the paper", said Lula. She was almost quivering in excitement.

I laughed and ripped the paper open. It was a royal blue towel with the Wonder Woman logo on it and, when I unwrapped it, I realized that the towel was actually a cape. I laughed.

"Now you don't have to wear a pillowcase safety-pinned around your neck", she said with a grin.

I laughed again. When I was very young, I was convinced I was Wonder Woman. To prove it to my sister and all the neighborhood kids, I jumped off the roof with a pillowcase pinned around my neck. It didn't work out for me and I landed in a big pile of doggie doo-doo. It took years for me to live that one down. Morelli, my ex, still periodically reminded me of it.

"Now my turn", said Connie. She handed over the huge bag. I slowly started to open it again, and looked up at Connie in laughter as Lula made a sound of disgust. Connie grinned, but she looked a bit anxious as well.

I removed the tissue paper and pulled out an incredibly soft blanket. It was made with chunky wool and was cream in color. I held it up to my face and rubbed the softness against my cheek. "This is beautiful, thank you", I said. "Did you make it?" It was a little known fact that Connie was a master knitter. She regularly knit blankets for the preemies at the hospital, and she knit sweaters for each of her family members for each Christmas. This was the first time that she had knit something for me though, and I was honored.

"I thought cream would go with everything", she said. She smiled. "I'm going to have a good time knitting things for the baby."

I knew that was true. Although my grandmother and mother didn't knit, this baby would be lucky enough to have a plethora of knit things to wear, all courtesy of Connie.


	3. Chapter 3

I tucked my checks from the bonds office into my purse and left with Lula to pick up Willy from the retirement home. We had arranged to meet Connie at the restaurant. I had made reservations for twelve-thirty, and we were going to have to hustle to make our reservation time.

Lula and I walked into the retirement home to find Willy already waiting for us. He looked up from his discussion with his friend with a smile on his face. "I'm ready", he said. He looked at Lula. "You changed your hair color!" Lula was always changing her hair color. Today's version was hot pink. The last time we had seen him her hair had been an emerald green.

Lula smiled and gave him a fancy handshake that I had never been able to figure out the movements to, and I leaned over and kissed him on his cheek. He smiled and lumbered to his feet, put on his winter coat, and followed us out the door to the car.

Lula sat in the back as Willy got in the front, and he smiled at us. "How has your month been?" he asked.

"It's been good", I said.

"Steph is pregnant", said Lula.

Willy grinned. "Well, isn't that something! When is the baby due?"

"The end of June", I said. "I'm not doing any more skip tracing while I am pregnant, and have handed off all my skips to another company to pick up. Lula and I will, however, still take you out for lunch. We look forward to spending time with you."

"I look forward to our lunch dates as well. Do you know yet if it is a boy or a girl?"

"Not yet, but I may know the next time I see you."

"Are you and Ranger going to find out?" said Lula.

"We want to. Ranger needs to prepare himself if we have another girl."

Lula laughed.

"What's wrong with a girl?" asked Willy.

"My partner has a girl from his first marriage that he isn't close to. He's a very macho man who will be a great daddy to whatever we have but, in all honesty, I predict that he will be doting and a complete mush if we have a girl. He is assertive and hard, but he has a heart of gold and cares deeply about people. A girl will knock him back on his heels and will be cossetted, whereas a boy he will raise to be a tough little kid."

"Why was he not closer to his first daughter?"

"For a few reasons, the main one being that she lives in Florida whereas he lives near his parents. He's still a good dad, but he doesn't know his daughter as well as he'd like."

"Have you been together with him long?"

"I've been friends with him for a few years, but it was only recently that we had become partners."

"Is he good to you?"

I smiled. "He's the best", I said.

"If he isn't, there's always me", said Willy. "I'd like to get married again. Are you planning on getting married?"

"I don't know at this point."

Willy glanced over at my hand. "You've got the ring", he said.

Lula squealed. "You didn't tell me that you had gotten engaged", she said. She bounced a little in her seat. "Wait until I tell Connie. I won the pool."

"The pool?"

"I bet Connie that you'd be engaged in time for Christmas. She said that Ranger wouldn't give you a ring for Christmas and that you'd get engaged on New Year's Eve. She thought he'd like the symbolism of starting a new relationship at the start of the new year. Vinnie thought Ranger would give you a ring on Christmas Day. I won."

"I think the bonds office has far too much time on its hands", I said with a smile.

"When did you get engaged?" said Lula. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"This is a secret engagement, which is why we didn't tell anyone, and we got engaged about two weeks ago."

"Why is it a secret engagement?" asked Willy. "If he is as good a person for you as you say he is, wouldn't you want to announce it to the world?"

"My fiancé lives off the grid. He doesn't want the record of us getting married, which is why I don't know if we ever will."

"I don't think that there is any chance of living off the grid in this digital age", said Willy.

"I don't know", said Lula. "I have looked into his past out of interest, and he doesn't exist."

"That's true", I said. "I've searched the internet for him as well, and I have come up with nothing." I smiled. "Unlike you, Willy. I have searched the internet for you, and have come up with a whole history."

"I'm sure that was a boring read." Willy laughed. "Does your fiancé wear tin foil as a hat as well?" he said.

I smiled as Lula laughed. "He's not someone who is reactionary. He deals with facts, not fantasy, and he's a realist. He doesn't believe in aliens."

"Hunh", said Lula. "Little does he know. I think I saw an alien the other day."

"Really?" said Willy with a smile. "What did it look like?"

"It was green and large and had hair growing out of its ears", said Lula. "Come to think of it, it looked a little like my ex after he ate a batch of bad clams."

Willy and I laughed.

I drove into the lot for the restaurant and parked my car, got out and waited for Willy and Lula to get out, then locked the doors. As we walked into the restaurant, Connie arrived and parked beside me. She quickly joined us and we got a table for four at the back of the restaurant. Following Ranger's example, I sat with my back to the wall and with a clear view of the restaurant. He had taught me a lot about self-protection, and sitting with my back to the wall was a standard practice for me now. While I would always give that position to Ranger when we were together, I now took that position myself when he wasn't there.

"Steph is engaged", said Lula to Connie as we sat down.

Connie beamed. "Let's see the ring", she said.

I held out my hand and Connie, Lula and Willy all inspected it. It was a five-stone ring. The outermost stones were actually a three-stone grouping. The next stones towards the center were larger single stones, and the middle stone was the largest of all. "Those are decent-sized rocks", said Willy. "Is your boyfriend loaded?"

"No, but he owns a successful small business", I said.

"How many carats is that?" asked Connie.

"Just over one", I said. "I think it's about one point two carats? Ranger had it designed for me. He even designed the setting." I held it up so that they could see that, from the side, the prongs holding up the three center stones were in a pattern to form open hearts. "The hearts are for the past, present, future stones."

"What are the outermost stones for, if the three middle stones are for past, present and future?" asked Connie.

"Ranger said that he liked three-stone rings, as they represented the past, present and future. But he liked two-stone rings, as they represented friends and lovers. He couldn't decide, so he combined the two."

Lula smiled. "He loves you so much." She turned to Connie. "You know what this means, don't you?"

"That I owe you a dozen doughnuts?"

"Yeah", said Lula. "I feel like a Boston Cream."

"Don't get a Boston Cream", said Willy. "When you take a bite of them, the cream all squishes out and gets all over your chin, and the chocolate glaze on the top gets all over your nose. Get an apple fritter. They just get your fingers sticky."

"So true", said Lula. "I always thought that, if I was a doughnut, I'd be a Boston Cream."

"Why's that?" I said.

"If you eat me, cream squirts out of me as well." Connie and I choked on our water. "At least", continued Lula, "that's what my ex said."


	4. Chapter 4

I ordered a French onion soup and a side of garlic bread with cheese. With the onion in the soup I could pretend that it was healthy, and I thought with it being soup I had some chance of it staying down. The garlic bread I just felt like eating. I didn't know if I'd be able to consume much of it, but when I saw it on the menu I just knew that I needed it. I'd like to say that my craving was related to me needing to give my body something that was in the garlic bread, but I didn't know if that was true. However, if I couldn't eat more than a few mouthfuls, I knew that Lula would be able to finish the rest. She was good that way.

"So you might only stay engaged?" said Willy. "You might not get married?"

"You never know", I said. "We might elope at some point, but at this point we don't have plans to actually formalize the union. As I said, we don't want the formal ties between us."

"I can understand that", said Connie. "Ranger is a very guarded person. I always wondered if he was in the CIA. After all, he says that he was a Ranger in the army, but there is no record of him being in the army. Instead, there is a record of him having gone to college. However, he seems too hard and knows too much about security issues to have just gone to college. He always is aware of what is going on around him."

I smiled. It was true. Ranger's history confused more than just me. I felt honored that he had now shared his history with me and I understood the expression of trust that it showed.

"Do you know his history?" said Lula.

"Yes", I said.

"Is he a member of the CIA?"

I smiled. "That's Ranger's story to tell. Not mine."

"So he is a CIA operative", said Lula triumphantly.

I laughed and shook my head. Lula had, and would always have, a good imagination.

"CIA agents are namby-pamby", said Willy. "I was a Special Forces soldier throughout the Vietnam war. We were as tough as they come. If you want someone tough to look after you, you'd be better off settling down with me."

I smiled. "Thank you for the offer, Willy."

"If CIA agents are wimps", said Lula, "then Ranger isn't a CIA agent. He is the hardest person I have ever met."

"Definitely not a college graduate", said Connie. "He doesn't have a frat boy gene in him."

"Yeah. He's too good at arresting people. He's the kind of person who is able to capture someone before they are even aware that there is a danger to them", said Lula. "However, CIA agent makes sense. I have noticed that there tends to be a coup somewhere whenever he is out of the country."

"There are coups even when he is in the country", I said. "There are coups all the time."

"Do you know where he goes when he is out of the country?" said Lula.

"Yes."

"Is he starting a coup?"

"No."

"Hunh. He's probably just making up something to tell you just so that you don't worry or question where he is. I bet he really is starting a coup."

I laughed.

"How will the baby deal with a father who starts coups for a living?" asked Lula.

"I don't think that Ranger is starting a coup", said Connie. "He's too honorable."

"Thank you", I said. I held up my water in a salute to Connie.

"But what happens if the country's political structure really needed to be overthrown? Ranger would start a coup then, wouldn't he?" said Lula. "After all, it wouldn't conflict with his ethics if someone really bad was in power."

"That's true", said Connie, "but I still can't see it. If he was starting a coup, he would need to be out of town for longer periods than he currently is. After all, he currently is only gone for about a week every month or two, and I don't know whether that time is spent in Miami with his other office."

"That's true. He does visit the Miami location frequently", I said. I didn't want to tell them that when he was out of town he most often was out of the country on PMC business and, when he was, he was training staff in Colombia. As I had said, it was Ranger's story to tell, and I wasn't about to break his secret.

"Hunh", said Lula. "I think you don't know what he is doing when he is leaving town. I bet he is just telling you that he is staying in the country when he is off to all sorts of war-ravaged countries. How do you get in touch with him when he has disappeared?"

"I phone him."

"Hunh. And he carries his phone on him?"

"Yes, which goes to prove that he's not starting a coup. He wouldn't be able to keep his phone on if he was doing something that he had to remain stealthy for."

"Are you sure it doesn't just go to voicemail?" said Lula. "He could have his phone set to vibrate rather than the ringer."

"The key point is that he always answers."

"Are you sure he isn't whispering?" said Lula. "If he was trying to remain stealthy, he could be whispering."

"He doesn't whisper."

"Can you phone him any time of the day?"

"I probably could, but I'd rather phone him at night so that we can have a long conversation rather than a rushed one in the middle of us both getting things done in our day."

"Do you ever talk to him on the phone during the day? Perhaps he has another woman in the wings, maybe even another family."

"He doesn't have another woman."

"Are you sure? Perhaps you should call him during the day to know for sure."

"If I called him during the day, I would scare him and make him think something was wrong. Besides, I have utmost faith that he isn't seeing another woman."

"But how do you know for sure?"

"Are you saying I'm not enough woman for him?"

"I'm just saying that it's possible. I'd want to go with him to see what he is doing while he is away."

"I don't want to go. I'm happy here in Trenton, and I have total trust that Ranger isn't with another woman."

"If you were my fiancée", said Willy, "you'd be enough for me. I wouldn't go looking elsewhere for another woman."

"Yeah, but Steph is pregnant now", said Lula. "With morning sickness, I bet she hasn't been with Ranger for a few weeks. I know, because I had lots of customers that came to me because their wives were pregnant and they were looking for a little action. I was able to scratch their itch and they were able to play the faithful husband with their wives. It was the only way that the men were able to withstand the trials of pregnancy."

"I can't see Ranger going elsewhere", I said. "He seems pretty happy to me."

"Uh-hunh", said Lula. "All I know is that Ranger is a hot-blooded male and like most males, he has itches. I wouldn't blame him for looking elsewhere."

"I would", I said, "and Ranger knows that. After having my first husband cheat on me, Ranger knows that I would be especially sensitive to him having an extramarital affair."

"Someone cheated on you?" said Willy in shock.

"I had only been married to my husband for three months before I found him boinking another woman. I got divorced immediately."

"The guy was an idiot", said Willy. Connie and Lula nodded in agreement. "Do you know what happened to him?"

I smiled. "He's currently in jail for tax evasion." It had been brilliant. When Ranger realized that Dickie had threatened me several times and hit me once during the three months of our marriage, he investigated Dickie's past. When he did, he found that Dickie wasn't claiming a significant sum of money on his taxes – and since Ranger was mad at him, he brought the FBI in to charge him with fraud. Dickie, however, realized that someone was looking for him. Not even considering that it was the FBI, Dickie thought it was his bookie coming to threaten him in order to get him to pay back his bookie for the money Dickie owed him. Dickie hired Rangeman to protect him from the bookie. It turned out that the bookie was after Dickie as well, so Ranger put him into witness protection and bled him of money while he protected him from the people looking for him. When the bookie's thugs had been arrested, Ranger let the FBI arrest Dickie. Apparently, Dickie had been too afraid to leave jail on bail. He thought the bookie was still after him, although from what I could see, the bookie had given up on Dickie and had written off the loan as a cost of doing business.

"He really was a stupid man, wasn't he?" said Willy. "After all, it is bad enough that he would ever cheat on you, but to cheat the government as well? He apparently still had to learn that cheating doesn't pay."

"He is a very conceited man who believes that he's above the law."

"What does he do?"

I grinned. "He's a lawyer."


	5. Chapter 5

By the time we were finished our lunches, it was well into the afternoon. Connie decided to head back to the office and finish her work for the day, and leave Lula and I to take Willy back to the nursing home together. Willy wanted to boast that two women had taken him for a ride. He wasn't, I think, planning on admitting that it was in a car.

"Would you mind going to the bank on the way back to the nursing home?" asked Willy when we got in the car.

"Not at all", I said. "I have to go to the bank myself. I have some checks to cash."

"I need to get money out", said Willy. "My son is inviting me to stay at his place Christmas Eve, so I'll get a chance to spend some time with my grandkids. They are in college now."

"Do you just have the one son?" I said.

"I had two daughters as well", he said. "One has died from breast cancer, but the other is alive and well. She gets a little frustrated with me. While my son has a good rapport with me and finds my antics funny, my daughter gets irritable and tells me that I should grow up. She was horrified when I ran down the street naked. Of course, I had borrowed her heels when I did that, so maybe I see her point. She loved those heels."

"Did she get the heels back?" I said.

"She did. I tried to tell her 'no harm, no foul', but she wasn't pleased with me."

"Why not? If she got her heels back", said Lula, "what's the big deal?"

"Apparently I stretched them out", said Willy. "I also broke one of the heels off."

"That would do it" said Lula. "I had a boyfriend who was a cross-dresser once. He would do almost anything to be able to dress in some of my clothes. My house had never been so clean."

"You got him to clean your house?"

"He cleaned Stephanie's as well. Of course, I was the one that messed her apartment up in the first place. I have to say, he took care of my clothes well. Even though he did a good deep clean of my place, he didn't get cleaners or anything spilled on the skirts."

"What sort of clothing did he wear?" asked Willy.

"He particularly liked my clothes from my Marilyn Monroe collection."

"I can understand that", said Willy. "She had an iconic style."

We arrived at the bank and I parked my car behind the building, and I again waited until Willy and Lula were out of the car before I locked it and led them away to the front of the building. The wind was whipping down the walkway from the back of the building to the front, and as I huddled into my jacket, I was glad that I was wearing the one that Ranger had given me. It was a black leather motorcycle jacket that looked good with the black maxi-skirt that I had on. Ranger had given it to me because it was bulletproof and he thought the added protection would be helpful for me. I liked it as a jacket as the bulletproof nature not only stopped bullets, but was an effective windbreak as well.

We walked into the bank. Lula went to the machine, but I decided to stand in line with Willy and use the teller. Seconds after we got into line, a group of five men came into the bank wearing Santa suits and beards. "Woo-hoo!" called out Lula. "I love Christmas!" She hustled up to the ringleader, and lifted his beard away from his face briefly.

The man pushed her away. "You bitch", he said. He yanked the beard down on his face, pulled a gun out of his pocket, and pointed it at Lula. But he didn't get the beard back in place before I had a good chance to see – and recognize – him. It was Arlen James, a former skip that I had caught a few months before. He had been in an armed robbery and had been caught. He was out on bail and hadn't gone to court when he had been supposed to, and Lula and I had captured him about three months ago. From what I could remember, his new court date was probably coming up soon. I wondered if this bank robbery was intended to come up with the money to pay a higher bail bond.

"Now, is that the sort of way that Santa should speak to people?" said Lula. She looked at me, and I shook my head slightly. I didn't want her to admit that we knew who he was. Assuming that we all got out of this, I wanted Lula and me to be able to identify him. I'd like it even better if we could identify the other four robbers as well.

I pushed the panic button on my watch, and I knew that Ranger would be listening to the scanner after hearing my panic button go off. I was hoping that he would pull an ERT together to come and rescue us. If nothing else, I thought they would alert the police to the fact that there was a problem.

"Nobody move", said Arlen. He carried the empty duffel bag to the teller and passed it over. "Fill this with money."

"How can he do that?" said Lula. "You told him not to move."

"Shut up, bitch."

"She's got a point", I said out loud. My phone rang, and I pulled it out.

"Don't answer that call", said Arlen.

"My boyfriend will only worry if I don't answer."

"I don't care if your boyfriend is worried", he said.

"Let me turn the phone off then", I said. I looked down and saw that the call was from Ranger, and I pressed the button to answer the call, thankful that Ranger didn't talk on the phone when you first answered until you spoke first. It was an unnerving habit that I'd periodically been able to benefit from. This was one of those times.

I put my phone on speaker and said, "so you are robbing the bank. You have five people here to do the deed. What are you planning on doing with us? After all, you have about six staff and eight patrons here. That's fourteen potential hostages."

"As long as you do what we say, we aren't planning on doing anything with you."

"And what do you want us to do?"

"I want you all to move to the back of the bank. I don't want anyone standing near the windows and trying to wave passersby down."

"Oh, sweetie, would I do that?" said Lula. "You know, when you are finished robbing this bank, you'll be real rich. I could stand being with a rich man."

I ran over everything that I could remember about Arlen. He wasn't a killer, and that's what I kept coming back to. He was a robber and was good at it. If my suspicions were correct, he had robbed many, many times and had only been caught the once.

"I could make you scream and beg for more", said Lula. "I used to be the best 'ho in town."

"I don't want no 'ho", said Arlen rather frantically. I remembered that he was a family man, and I could see that Lula was remembering that as well. She was trying her best to keep Arlen off-balanced. It was the only way I thought that we'd be able to survive the hold-up. I could tell that Lula thought so as well.

She looked at me, and I looked at Arlen. "So what happened?" I said as I escorted Willy to the desk. "Did you just get up and decide to rob a bank today? Or was this planned?"

"We've been planning this for a while", said another of the robbers. I thought I recognized his voice, but I couldn't place it. There was something about his lisp though, that made me think that I recognized it. I looked at Lula and she shook her head slightly at me. She didn't recognize him either.

"Is this so that you have money to buy your Christmas gifts?" I said.

"Yeah", said Arlen. "Merry fucking Christmas to us." The other four thieves laughed. Out of the four robbers, I thought that I was able to detect a feminine laugh. I looked at Lula again, and was glad that I had worked with her so much over the years. We had become a tight unit and, although we were slightly ineffective – okay, largely ineffective – we were also able to read each other's mind when we were in a tight situation.

"Do you have families?" I said.

"What's it to you?" asked Arlen. "You know, you talk an awful lot." He pointed his gun at me again.

"She's going to zip her lips and throw away the key, aren't you?" said Lula. "You don't have to point your gun at her."

"I was just making conversation", I said. "When I get nervous, I talk a lot. Do you talk a lot when you get nervous?" I looked around. All five of the robbers had guns, but on everyone other than Arlen the guns looked foreign in their hands. They weren't comfortable with the concept of shooting their guns. Perhaps we could capitalize on that?

"Shut up, bitch!"

"I'm sorry. You're pointing your gun at me, and that makes me nervous."

"Don't worry, Steph", said Willy. "Not all my Special Forces moves have left me yet."

I smiled. Willy was bent over and walked with a cane. His hearing was going and his eyesight wasn't good. I thought his ability to perform any kind of self-defense or protective moves disappeared around the same time as he got his first hip transplant and I didn't think it had come back when he had this second.

I noticed Ranger and his men come up to the bank and park haphazardly in front. Ranger got out of his car and put his coat on. I knew from experience that his coat, like mine, was bulletproof.

Some of the ERTs disappeared around the back of the building while the others remained out front. A number of cruisers arrived at the scene as well. Luckily Ranger had told them to come without lights or sirens. As far as I could tell, the robbers didn't know that they were surrounded or that their chances of getting away were absolutely non-existent.

I could see Ranger stop and talk to some of the men before making sure that his earpiece was on. He walked into the bank, his gun suspiciously absent, his wallet out as he took out his bank card. I knew his gun wasn't completely gone. While he might appear to be unarmed, I figured that his gun was probably in the small of his back. Still looking down, he walked over to the line, walked to the front, and looked up. I smiled at him as he visually assessed me, then looked at the men. "Hello", he said. "Are you going to a costume party? Or are you just going to work?" He looked around. "Is this a Santa convention?"

Arlen looked at one of the other Santas. "I thought I told you to lock the doors to the bank?"

"It's not time to lock the doors to the bank", said Ranger. "The bank doesn't close until eight tonight. I checked the hours before I came."

"I checked the hours as well", I said. "I was trying to see if I should come before dinner or after."

"Shut the fuck up", said Arlen. His gun was wavering, but he swung it from pointing at me to pointing at Ranger. "Get to the desk with the rest."

Ranger looked at Arlen. "The way I see it, you have a problem. You have fourteen hostages here, and the police aren't going to like it if you don't let them go."

"The police don't even know that I am here", said Arlen.

"Are you sure about that?" said Ranger. "Look outside." He took a step forward until he was within striking distance to Arlen and, when Arlen's attention was moved to the front of the bank, Ranger pounced. He grabbed hold of the gun and pushed it towards the ceiling, twisted it out of his hands and pointed it at Arlen.

While Ranger got control of Arlen, one of the other robbers grabbed me around my neck and dragged me from the group in front of the desks. "If you shoot him", he said, "I'll shoot this woman." It was the man with the lisp, and I finally placed him. He was another skip that Lula and I brought in a few months ago. He, apparently, was following Arlen's example and trying to raise the money to pay bail.

Ranger moved so that Arlen was between me and him, so that he could see what was happening with me without taking his eyes off Arlen.

"Let my brother go", the lispy guy said.

"He's your brother? You are both Santas?" I said.

"Yeah. It's a family business", he said.

"I thought Santas were supposed to give, not take", said Lula.

That created the diversion that Ranger and I needed. Ranger whipped his cuffs out of his pocket, grabbed Arlen's wrist and snapped it on, and spun him around and snapped on the other cuff. Meanwhile, I elbowed my assailant in the solar plexus, stomped on his instep and, when he wasn't gasping as much as I would have liked, I kicked back as hard as I could against his knee. I reached up and twisted the hand that was holding onto the gun and, when his hand still retained its grasp, I pulled his hand down and bit him. He dropped the gun and I kicked it towards Ranger. He picked it up and put it in his pocket as I captured the robber's hand and twisted it up behind his back.

"Now", said Ranger.

I heard a cry behind me, and I turned as Rangeman staff came pouring in from both the back and the front of the bank. By my count, Ranger had called in both ERTs. I looked, and one of the other Santas had captured Willy and was holding him hostage. The lispy man that I had captured was still struggling and fighting in my arms, and Hal came up and grabbed him. He shook him slightly. "Stop", he said. The lispy man froze. "That's better", said Hal. "Steph, can you cuff him?"

I grabbed Hal's cuffs off his utility belt and cuffed the lispy man, then turned to the other Santa. "What do you want?" I said. "You are surrounded. Any number of the rescuers have their sights on you. There is no chance for you to escape. So what do you want?"

"I want to get free", said the Santa. In her terror, she was starting to forget to lower her voice and I knew that she was the female Santa. "I just want to go home and look after my children."

"You should have thought of that before you decided to rob a bank", I said.

"It was supposed to be easy."

"I have found in life that things aren't that easy. Why don't you let Willy go?" I said.

"I'm just an old man", said Willy. "I have two titanium hips and a titanium knee. I can't go through a metal detector without setting it off, and I can't walk past the junkyard without being drawn to the electromagnet. No one would miss me if these robbers offed me. Nobody would even care if they tried to use me as a bargaining chip."

"That's true", I said. "I am a much better bargaining chip. I have two jobs and the police aren't going to be happy if I am taken hostage. Let Willy go." I looked around me. Hal had the lispy man. Ranger had Arlen. Hector had another, and Eduardo had the fourth. Only the person holding Willy wasn't yet caught.

Willy leaned heavily on his cane. "I'm an old man", he said. "This woman is pregnant. Do you really think that the police are going to let you take a pregnant woman hostage?"

"That's why I would make an excellent hostage", I said. I glared at Willy. He smiled at me, and I knew that he had something up his sleeve.

He didn't get to do what he was thinking of though. The woman holding him pushed him aside and grabbed me, twisted me around so that I could see everyone, and buried the gun in the small of my back. "Don't come near me", she said, "or I will blow a hole in this woman's abdomen so large that not only will the baby die, but this woman will as well."

Hal guided the lispy man and Arlen out of the bank.

"Stop", she said rather frantically.

"You have Stephanie", said Ranger. "What are you planning on doing with her?" He sounded casual but his look was intense and focused.

"She's my ticket out of here. I just want to go home and be with the kids."

"You should have thought of that before you decided to play Scrooge. You're supposed to give during Christmas, not take. And taking from a bank is a big no-no at any time of the year", I said. I looked at Ranger and tried to reassure him with my eyes. I didn't know what I was doing, but I was pretending that I did. I was pretending that I had it all under control. It was hard, though. I was scared, but I was scared for the baby just as much as I was scared for myself.

The woman pulled me through the group of people towards the door. "Tell everyone to leave me alone and let me escape", she said. "I'm taking this woman – Stephanie, was it? – with me."

I could just hear Ranger say quietly, "let the woman go. Escort her, diamond formation, to the car. Follow the car. Do not shoot. I repeat, do not shoot."

The woman pulled me through the doors of the bank and over to their getaway car. She indicated to me with her gun to get into the driver's side and scotch over. Just as I was about to get in the car, a shot rang out and the woman's shoulder started to gush blood. In the woman's surprise, she jerked and spasmed, and she pulled the trigger on the gun she was holding. The projectile hit me square in the abdomen. I looked at her in shock and opened and shut my mouth as I tried to get air in. She started to scream, and seconds later there was another shot and her head exploded.

Ranger had been following us, and he rushed over to my side. "Figure out who the shooter was", he said as he barked orders. "Report back. Get a paramedic over here", he said as he reached my side. He looked up. The police were surrounding the woman.

Arlen was going ballistic in the police cruiser. I felt bad for him. From what I remembered of him, he was a nice man. A thief, but a nice man. He would take it hard that a member of his crew had died.

I still couldn't breathe and I was starting to panic. My vision was going spotty, and I fell onto the icy pavement. Ranger frantically pulled my jacket away from my body and pulled my sweater up to reveal my abdomen. He checked for bullet holes. "Breathe deeply and slowly", he said. His calm voice helped ground me, and the panic receded. It was going to be okay. Ranger was there. "You're going to be just fine, babe." He massaged my stomach and chest, and I suddenly was able to breathe again. I gasped in a breath, and Ranger smiled and leaned down and kissed me on the nose. "Welcome back", he said.

"Holy crap", I said as my vision cleared.

"You're going to have a beauty of a bruise", said Ranger, "and I want you to go to the hospital to get an ultrasound done. I want to make sure that the baby wasn't impacted by the force of the bullet."

A young officer – he was new and I didn't know his name – came running up to me. "Did you see the kill shot I did? Pretty cool, hunh? Hey, Ranger, do you think there is a spot on your staff for me? I heard that you pay better than the TPD."

"You could have killed Stephanie", said Ranger. His eyes were tight in his 'not happy' look and his voice was deadly. "Your recklessness has resulted in one person dead and another person who may lose her baby. And you are crowing about it?"

The smile on the young probationary officer started to wilt. "I thought you'd be happy. I saved the day."

"You created a whole shitload of problems that we now have to deal with. Did you not hear my command not to shoot?"

The officer flushed.

"Because of you", said Ranger, "a family will be missing a mother tonight. A husband will be missing a wife. A mother and father will be missing their grown child. Because of you, a tragedy has occurred."

"I stopped a tragedy from occurring."

Ranger looked at him in disgust. "Whenever you take someone's life, no matter the circumstances, a tragedy has occurred. No matter how essential the death is, death is always a tragedy."

"She was going to shoot Stephanie."

"First of all, I highly doubt that. I think she was just using Stephanie to get away. She would have let her go. Second of all, Stephanie was wearing a bulletproof jacket."

"I didn't know that", said the kid.

"You don't always have all the information available when you go into a mission. That's why you have a chain of command, and you have to trust that the person at the top has all the information."

The kid swallowed hard. "Is Stephanie going to be okay?"

"I hope so", said Ranger. "But I want to find out if there were any impacts upon the baby. That's why I want her to go to the hospital."

I moved to sit up, and Ranger pushed me back down again. I glared at him, but I didn't complain. I knew that it wouldn't make a difference and I would just be wasting my breath. That was something I still didn't have a lot of. It felt like I'd had a sledgehammer slammed into my stomach, and even breathing was painful to do. "What's your name?" I said to the kid.

"Cole", he said. "Cole McDonald. I know. I should be a farmer, not a cop."

I smiled. He may be trigger happy and he may not follow orders and he may be proud of an immature and irresponsible action, but at least he had a sense of humor.

"Ranger", said Hal as he guided the paramedics through to my side, "I'm going to let Lula come over for a minute or two. She's getting hysterical."

"Yeah, the police are here", I said with a smile as the paramedics asked me questions and probed the impact site. Ranger thought about smiling. He knew how upset Lula was around police officers. I personally thought it was a carryover from her days as a hooker. She grew almost frantic in her need to escape. There were a few times that I'd had to take her to the station with me, and she would refuse to go inside the building. She instead would insist upon staying in the car. It was always a crap shoot as to whether the car would be there when I got back. More than once she'd hotwired my car and left without me. "She's going to freeze in terror when they want to talk to her about what happened."

Joe Morelli was the one cop who Lula didn't mind as much as the others. He was my former boyfriend. Our relationship had started as friends when he wanted to play choo-choo with me when I was a young child. Since he was always the train and would never let me be anything other than the tunnel, our friendship started to fade. When I was in my teens, Morelli became known as the Italian Stallion. His sexual prowess was legendary and, since I wanted to experience that prowess myself – after all, who better than the Italian Stallion to hand my v-card to – I let him take my virginity behind the counter at the Tasty Pastry. It was a long time before I could look at a cherry doughnut without blushing afterwards. Morelli didn't call me after doing the deed however, and that got me mad. So the next time I saw him I 'accidentally' ran him over in my father's car. I broke his leg, but was still happy that I had handed my v-card over to him. At least with Morelli, he gave as good as he got.

Our relationship had progressed to a giving and loving one. However, despite our love for each other, we could never truly commit and, it was through that realization I had decided that I loved Morelli, but I loved him more as a friend than I did a boyfriend. We had only broken up eight months before, but we had been lucky and had been able to maintain the friendship that had been the cornerstone of our relationship. Morelli hadn't been happy with me when we broke up, but he has since told me that he understands why I ended the relationship when I did and he is happy for me that I am so happy in my life. I only wished that he could find someone that made him happy the same way.

Morelli came running across the pavement and his eyes zeroed in on me. His face paled. I smiled at him, and he looked a little relieved. He came over and looked at me. "How are you doing, cupcake?" he said. "I heard you were shot."

"I was but I was wearing my bulletproof jacket, so I'm just a little sore", I said.

"Let's get you up", said the paramedic.

"What's the verdict?" I said as Ranger helped me sit up.

"I think you will be fine", said the paramedic. "You should have your ribs x-rayed, and I'd personally want to see the results of an ultrasound. But otherwise, I think you are safe to return to your life. Do you want to take the ambulance to the hospital?"

I shuddered. My mother would hear about my visit to the hospital if I took an ambulance in, and while I intended to tell her, I wanted to be in control of the story. If I didn't call her immediately, before I got to the hospital, she would hear through the grapevine that the ambulance had brought me in, and that I had been on death's door. She would hear that the paramedics had to revive me on the way to the hospital and that I'd had to be operated on for hours to close up the multitude of bullet holes. While my grandmother would revel in the story and would embellish it even more, my mother would just worry. "No", I said. "That's okay." I knew I needed to call my mother immediately, and I wouldn't be able to if I took the ambulance to the hospital. Besides, taking an ambulance was a bit of overkill. I had just been shot. It wasn't anything important.

"You should take the ambulance", said Willy as he joined the group outside. "You could ask them to use the sirens. That's what I did when I was first caught running down the street. The sirens made it all worth it."

I laughed, and then moaned as my body protested at the movement of my muscles.

"I thought meeting us made it all worth it", said Lula as she joined us.

Willy smiled. "That too", he said.

"I need to get a statement from you", said Morelli.

"At the hospital", said Ranger. "I really need to see if Steph will be relegated to bed rest."

I groaned. "Not again", I said.

"Were you wearing your bulletproof vest?" said Lula. "I didn't see it on you."

"My jacket is bulletproof", I said.

"Fucking A", said Lula.

I handed my keys to Lula to drive my car back to the bonds office, and I stiffly got to my feet. As Ranger led me away, I could hear Willy turn to Lula and say, "definitely not CIA. There isn't a namby-pamby bone in his body."

I smiled.


	6. Chapter 6

Ranger drove to the hospital and I called my mom on the way. When she answered, I said, "remember how you I told me that you would like to hear about any time I was going to the hospital? Well, I just want you to know that I'm fine."

"What happened?" asked my mom. I could hear the dread in her voice.

"I was at the bank when it was robbed this afternoon. I'm fine because I was wearing my bulletproof jacket, but I was shot. Ranger says that I'm going to have a beauty of a bruise, but there were no bullet holes."

"If you are okay, why are you going to the hospital?" asked my mother.

"The bullet hit me in the abdomen and Ranger wants to make sure the baby is as okay as I am. I'm just going to be a little sore for a while. The bullet may or may not have broken some ribs, but it definitely bruised me."

"So I shouldn't worry when Zoe calls me to report that her daughter saw you in the hospital?"

"No, you shouldn't. We'll call you with the verdict when we are released."

"Okay. Thanks for telling me. Let me know if I can do anything for you."

"Thanks, Mom. I will."

"Perhaps I can make you a pineapple upside-down cake?" she said. That was a wonderful offer. My mother was a fantastic cook. Meat lasagna, veal parmesan, shepherd's pie, roast chicken, turkey tetrazzini, spaghetti and meatballs, chicken stew with dumplings, you name it and my mother has probably excelled at cooking it at least once in her lifetime. Unlike me, my mother enjoyed cooking and her love of the practice showed in the quality of food that she could prepare. She had a number of specialties and my favorites were all her desserts. Pineapple upside-down cake, German chocolate torte, rhubarb crisps, peach cobbler, banana cream pie, key lime pie, cinnamon streusel coffee cake, chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, I liked it all. But my most favorite of all was pineapple upside-down cake. My mother knew this and made it frequently for me. In fact, her favorite way of punishing me when I was growing up was to make pineapple upside-down cake for dessert – and then to deny me some. I thought that was a punishment of utmost cruelty.

Ranger pulled into the hospital and let me off at the doors. I hobbled over to take a number as I waited for Ranger to park the car. Emergency was hopping and Ranger was able to park the car and wait with me for a few minutes before I was called into triage.

Ranger accompanied me into the room. Lorna was working the triage desk. I went to school with her. She was now married and had four kids. "Hey", I said. "How's the family?"

"Good", said Lorna. She took my temperature and my blood pressure. "What seems to be the problem?"

I told her about being twelve weeks pregnant, and I told her about getting shot earlier that day. "I don't know if this matters, but it hurts to breathe and it hurts to move. I'm glad that the baby isn't kicking me from the inside and hurting me that way as well. So I don't know if I broke a rib or two as well as giving myself a bad bruise."

"We'll certainly check it out", said Lorna. "Who is the father?"

"Ranger", I said.

"How did Morelli take it? Or does he even know?"

"He knows, of course, and he took it well. Morelli is Ranger's friend as well as mine, so he was honestly happy for us. He said that he just wished that he could find someone as perfect for him as Ranger is for me."

"Wow. I never would have thought of Morelli as being so mature about things", she said.

I smiled. "You'll probably be seeing him in a few minutes. He said he wanted to come to get Ranger's and my statements."

"I'll look for him. I missed seeing Morelli and you when your grandmother was drugged with bath salts." Morelli had a case in front of him where people were snorting cremated remains thinking it was cocaine. Remains were being stolen from the crematorium and my grandmother found out. She decided she was going to investigate and, in doing so, discovered that one of the funeral homes was dealing drugs. She overdosed on bath salts in her investigation, and we had to take her to the hospital. She wasn't in good shape when we brought her in, but with some medical help and a bit of time, she recovered completely.

That was scary enough, but it got worse when I started bleeding. Ranger and I thought that we were losing the baby, and I'd had to lie down for twenty hours a day for the next ten days to give the baby a fighting chance. Up until now, the baby was hanging in there. I had just been cleared for regular duties again just ten days ago. I already knew that the obstetrician wouldn't be pleased that I had been shot. I didn't want to let him know that I had put the baby in danger again when I had promised him that I would be careful. Of course, it wasn't really my fault, was it?

Lorna sent me to registration and, when I had one of those plastic bracelets put on my wrist and had given all my insurance information, I was called back to a cubicle.

Ranger held my hand as I sat on the bed. "Why don't you have a nap while you wait?" said Ranger. "You haven't had a nap today yet, and I'm sure you're tired."

"I am, but to tell you the truth, I'm in too much pain to sleep."

"Then it's a good thing that we are in the hospital", said Ranger. "I want to know what sort of painkillers you can take while you are pregnant."

"Hopefully something that will knock me out", I said. Tears came to my eyes.

Ranger lifted my hand and kissed my fingers. "On a scale of one to ten, how bad is the pain?"

"Remember when I got shot in the ass?" Shortly after I had first met Ranger, I had been shot while capturing a skip and Ranger had been the one to drive me home from the hospital. "This is worse."

"Babe", said Ranger. He unfurled my clenched fingers and massaged my hand. "Don't think about the pain in your stomach. Concentrate on the feel of my hand massaging yours. Let your body relax as your hand relaxes."

I tried. I really did. But I couldn't get past the pain that every breath caused, and tears slowly slid down my cheeks.

Ranger sat on the bed beside me, and he slowly and lightly rubbed my back and let me cry. Shortly afterwards, the doctor rushed into the room. I hurriedly wiped my face dry of tears as he turned to me. "What's going on?" he said.

Ranger told the doctor what had happened, and the doctor pulled up my sweater to look at my abdomen. "You have a very black bruise here", he said. He pressed on the spot, and I whimpered in pain. "I want to get some imaging done. First, I'll look to see if you have any fractured bones. Second, I'll look to see if there is any internal bleeding. Third, I'll look to see what your baby is doing in there. When you are finished with imaging I want you to come back here." He wrote out a requisition form and handed it to me, and Ranger gently helped me off the examination bed and walked with me down to the imaging department.

I had several tests done. While Ranger and I liked seeing the baby look so healthy and happy, the other tests were boring. I was glad to get back to my cubicle and I was looking forward to going home.

Morelli badged his way into my cubicle while we were waiting to get the results of the tests. "How are you doing?" he said.

Tears came to my eyes. "Okay", I said. "I just want to go home."

"After we get the results of the tests", said Ranger. "I know you want to go to bed." He had a long-suffering tone to his voice. He had heard me tell him that I wanted to go home at least fifteen times since we had arrived at the hospital an hour before.

"We could just skip the results of the tests", I said. "We know that the baby is healthy and happy in there. That's all that matters."

"And you could have internal bleeding", said Ranger. "The baby won't live very long if you don't live very long."

"I'm sure I'm fine."

"I'm glad that you are sure", said Ranger with a sigh, "but I want to be sure as well, and the only way that I'll be sure is if a doctor says that you are okay."

Morelli smiled and looked at Ranger. "Good luck with that. She's not the most reasonable person when it comes to taking care of herself."

Ranger thought about smiling.

"I'm not that bad", I said.

"Uh-hunh", said Morelli. "My favorite example was when you were recovering from your leg getting shot, and you decided to chase a skip and tackle him."

"That might not have been so bad", said Ranger, "if she hadn't jumped out of a moving vehicle just before she ran the skip down."

I glared at Ranger. "Traitor", I said.

Ranger smiled. "Babe."

"So what happened this time?" said Morelli.

Ranger led him through what had happened from the start of receiving my phone call to the mustering of the ERTs to his arrival at the bank. He talked about what he saw at the bank, detailed what had happened when he was there, and ended with me getting shot. "I will write up a report and have Hal write up a report, and will submit them to you at some point over the next couple of days." Hal was the head of the Emergency Response Teams. While Ranger was the unit commander, Hal was the team lead.

Morelli wrote it all down on his witness statement, and then turned to me.

"Whatever he said", I said.

Morelli smiled. "You know it doesn't work that way."

I laughed. "Somehow I knew I wouldn't get away with that."

I detailed what had happened from the time I got to the bank to the time Morelli had gotten there. "Did you feel that they had planned the heist?" said Morelli.

"Yes and no. From watching them and knowing Arlen's habits, I suspect that he had a group of five people including him ready to rob the bank and they had planned to do so. Just having the Santa suits available to wear showed that they planned it at least a little bit. However, Arlen is a pretty protective guy. He adores his wife and dotes on his children. I can't see that he would allow a woman to be part of his gang unless he had someone back out at the last minute. Do you know how the woman is associated with him?"

"She was his wife."

"Crap. See, that doesn't make sense to me. He's not the kind of person to ever put his wife in danger. For some reason, he thought this heist wouldn't be dangerous."

"He's just getting cocky and thinking he's above the law or that bad things won't happen to him?" said Morelli.

I thought about that for a minute. "I still can't see it. My impression of him was that he would do anything to keep the insanity away from his family. He knew his job was dangerous. He planned things to the utmost before he did a heist, which is why he got away with as many thefts as he did. I honestly think that he has several heists in his past."

"Besides being protective, what was your impression of him when you were chasing him before?" asked Morelli. "More than anyone I have ever met, you get in the heads of the people you are chasing. Your insight could prove invaluable."

"You want me to give you a profile?" I looked at him, shocked. I didn't realize he put as much credence to my opinions.

"Yes", said Morelli. "You have great instincts. Your research and your preparation for capturing skips are top-notch."

"Just my follow-through needs work?"

Morelli smiled. "You said it." I growled at him as he laughed. "Seriously, what are your impressions of him?" he said.

"Honestly? I'd have to look at my notes again. From memory, he was a nice person who was an easy capture. He said paying bail was all part of the price of doing business. He didn't take offense to getting caught and he was cooperative when he came with us. He was a gentleman who was a little stunned by Lula. With her brashness, he didn't know how to interact with her. He's a thief, and I suspect he's a good one. I suspect that he had robbed many times and had only been caught once…now twice. He's a family man, protective of his wife and children. I'm surprised that he allowed his wife to help out on the heist. I thought for sure that he would work to protect his wife and children from his criminal life. That's why I'm thinking that perhaps someone had pulled out at the last minute and his wife stepped in to take the person's place."

"You think their relationship was good?"

"I got the feeling he had a great relationship with her. I'm sure he is panicking right now. I feel bad for him. The newbie at the crime scene really fucked up."

"I'm recommending to the captain that he be written up. It was a needless death. You recognized Arlen when Lula pulled down his beard?"

"I did. So did Lula. We decided that things would go a lot better if we didn't admit to recognizing him."

"What about the lispy man?"

"He was another skip we brought in a few months ago. Like with Arlen, I suspect that his court date is coming up soon. I didn't realize that he was related to Arlen."

"Do you have any information on him?"

"Not a lot. I will pull the files I prepared on each of them and give them to you."

"Can you do a more in-depth investigation of Arlen and the lispy man? I know you do more of a cursory inspection when you are creating the capture plans and only go in-depth if you are having trouble finding the person."

"What are you looking for?"

"I don't know. Ideally if we can find evidence of other crimes would be my first choice, but otherwise anything I can use when we are charging him. Did you have any other information on any of the other robbers?"

"I didn't see who they were."

"Fair enough. You said that you felt that Arlen was the ringleader?"

"He certainly seemed to be leading the group. The other robbers kept looking at him and waiting for his commands."

The doctor came into the cubicle. "The imaging looks good", he said. "No internal bleeding that we have to be concerned about, but your ribs have bone bruises on them. You were lucky. The bone bruises will heal within the next four to eight weeks. If the pain worsens or you develop a fever, come back. I just want to do an internal, and then I'll talk to you about pain management."

"I'm out of here", said Morelli with a grimace. "Cupcake, if you could get those files to me as soon as you can, that would be great."

The doctor situated himself at the base of the bed as I pulled down my panties and wiggled under the sheet to pull my skirt up. The doctor looked at me. "If you could just bend your knees", he said, "and move down the bed."

Morelli turned white. "That's it. I'm out of here."

He turned and flew out of the cubicle, and I had to struggle not to laugh. My lips must have twitched in amusement though, because Ranger looked at me and smiled. "Babe", he said.


	7. Chapter 7

Even though there was no bleeding, the doctor recommended that I spend the next two days in bed at least. While I was frustrated by his recommendation, I also realized that moving around would be difficult – and I knew that Ranger wouldn't help me much. Even though the doctor allowed me to get up and resume my normal activities after a couple of days, Ranger was convinced that it was better for me and better for the baby for me to lie down for several more. Ranger was stubborn, and I knew that nothing would convince him that it was safe otherwise. Without Ranger's help, I would be relegated to the bed or the sofa. I was in a lot of pain and the doctor didn't want to give me any painkillers stronger than over-the-counter acetaminophen. I figured that I had a long few days ahead of me.

Ranger and I got back to the office, and I elected to go to my office and pull the files that Morelli needed. Ranger elected for me to go to bed. His election won. When we got on the elevator, I pressed the button for the fifth floor and Ranger pressed the button for the seventh. When the doors opened on the fifth floor Ranger blocked my way to getting off. I tried to deke around him, but with the pain in my stomach I wasn't very agile. He captured me gently before I had stepped foot outside the elevator. "You can guide Dirk through finding the files over the phone", he said. "Dirk can send them to Morelli."

My shoulders went down and I could feel my lip go out in a pout. Ranger thought about smiling as he looked at me, and he brought his hand up and rubbed his thumb over my lower lip. "It won't be for forever, babe", he said softly.

"Just for the record, I hate being relegated to lying in bed."

"Just for the record, I know."

I sighed.

Ranger sighed.

"I know that it is only for a couple of days", I said.

"I think you should be still and let your body recover at least until Tuesday. That's four days from now. I know that is double the amount of time that the doctor recommended but it can't hurt – and remember what the obstetrician said. Any time you have major stress in your life, he wants you to keep your feet up and lie down for a few days. I'm sure that he would consider being in a bank robbery as an applicable stress – and that's not including the gunshot to your abdomen."

The doors closed on the elevator and it started its climb once more. "You know, some people go through their pregnancies and never have to worry about losing their baby", I said.

"That doesn't make your need to be careful any less valid", said Ranger.

"My sister never had to rest and keep her feet up during any of her pregnancies", I said. I sighed in frustration. All my life, Val had been better than me at whatever we tried. Around the same time as I failed at being a cheerleader – and Val had become captain of the team – I had decided that I would never compete with Val again. Hence, instead of becoming a cheerleader, I became a baton twirler. But while Val excelled at being a cheerleader, my lack of coordination and general clumsiness meant that the baton frequently got away from me – and during my first performance the baton got away from me and landed in the tuba. I hadn't known what to do, so I just kept doing the dance moves without a baton. The coach kindly encouraged me to quit afterwards. I was the only person in the history of the baton twirlers who had been eased out of the team.

"That's good since, with having five kids, I'm sure she didn't have time to rest. You are lucky in that you have the ability and the money to rest properly. Valerie would have had to still look after her husband. You have Ella to cook and clean and do the laundry. Valerie would have had to look after her other kids. This is your first. Valerie would still have to fill in on the job of looking after Albert's office. They can't afford to hire anyone else into the role. You have Dirk and Miguel covering the research desk so, although they aren't catching up on the research, they are at least able to do some of the work. You have the ability to baby yourself. Val did not."

"I thought it said a lot when we were sitting on Santa's knee and Val asked for an hour to herself to have a bubble bath, without anyone needing the bathroom or anyone needing her."

"Whenever you want to have a bubble bath, either before or after you have the baby, just let me know", said Ranger. "I will always cover for you so that you can relax in the tub."

I smiled. "Luckily I'm not a big fan of bubble baths", I said. "Unless you are joining me, I tend to get bored and irritable with them. I always wonder what I'm supposed to be doing there, and then I start thinking of all the things that I could be doing, and then I start thinking about how I am wasting time. I'd much prefer a hot shower over a bubble bath."

Ranger smiled. "That's what I have always felt about them as well", he said. "There just seemed to me to be something inherently gross about sitting in dirty water."

"That's what the bubbles are for – to clean the water as you sit in it."

"Babe."

The doors slid open and Ranger led me into the apartment. I moved to get out of my boots, and hissed in pain as I tried to bend over. Tears came to my eyes.

"Babe", said Ranger. He helped me out of my boots and walked with me down to the den. On the way through the bedroom he helped me change into a pair of gray flannel sleep pants, a black t-shirt of his, and one of his black hoodies. He knew from the past that I loved wearing his clothes – and there was no time that I liked it better than when something was going wrong. I found wearing his clothes to be reassuring, a constant reminder that I was loved. It was like a warm hug all the time.

I used the facilities, checked for blood and was reassured when there wasn't any, and followed Ranger to the sofa. He turned on the fireplace as I sat down on the cushions, and he helped me lie down. He returned to the front hall and picked up the two gift bags from Connie and Lula, carried them through, and pulled out the blanket that Connie had made me. It was wonderfully soft and warm, and he spread it over me. I yawned. The pain was making me sleepy. I wanted to shut my eyes and pretend that nothing was wrong and the day hadn't happened.

Ranger lifted my feet and sat down on the sofa, and put my feet in his lap. He pulled out his phone again and wrote a text to Hal to ask him for the report. He got an immediate reply that the report had already been completed and that it was on his desk. Ranger sent his thanks in reply.

"What do you want me to tell Dirk?" he said.

"Just let me talk to him", I said. "I think it would be easier."

Ranger dialed the number for my office, and within seconds Dirk answered. "Hey", I said.

"Hey, Steph. You surprised me since the phone says that Ranger is calling."

"This is Ranger's phone. I hijacked it."

Dirk laughed. "That would explain it. How's your day going?"

"It was going well until I was involved in a bank robbery and was shot. Now it's not going so well."

"My God! Are you okay?"

"I was wearing a bulletproof jacket so I am, but the doctor recommended that I spend the next couple of days in bed again, and Ranger wants to increase that time to four days just to be safe. So although I'll be reachable by phone, I won't be able to come down to help you until after Christmas. You are taking the week off from the 23rd to January 2nd, isn't that right?"

"Yes. Is that still okay?"

"That's perfectly fine. The office is running at a skeleton crew during the Christmas holidays. I will cover the research desk, but Miguel will also be taking the week off. He will be spending his time moving into his new house. It was great that it had such a fast turnaround time."

"If you need me to come in during the Christmas week, just let me know. I'll be around and can take the time to help you out."

"Thank you for the offer", I said, "but that won't be necessary. Spend time with your family. You deserve that. When was the last time you spent a Christmas with your wife and kids?"

"About four years ago."

"That means that you have the joy of watching your children open their gifts from Santa. Enjoy it."

"I will. I'm just not sure about enjoying Christmas dinner with the in-laws. I'd be quite happy if you got me out of that."

I laughed. "It's all a rite of passage." I could hear Dirk smile over the phone. I knew from speaking to him previously that he got along well with his in-laws.

I explained to him the need to send the files to Morelli, and I told him how to retrieve them. All the while I was talking to Dirk, Ranger massaged my feet. By the time I finished talking to him, my body was incredibly relaxed and I felt like a sloth sinking into the cushions.

I hung up the phone and handed it back to Ranger, and he got up and retrieved my phone to put on the table in front of me. I shut my eyes. "I'm going down to my office for a little bit", he said softly. "Have a nap, and I'll wake you in time for dinner."


	8. Chapter 8

Ranger woke me with a kiss, and I stretched and winced. "How are you feeling?" said Ranger.

"Better enough that I can sit up and do some work for the office", I said.

Ranger frowned. "No, seriously, how are you feeling?"

"Honestly? Quite a bit better. My stomach is just a dull ache now, and as long as I don't move it, I hardly notice it."

"Does breathing still hurt?"

"Not the same. I think if I didn't breathe, it wouldn't hurt at all."

"I'm sure", said Ranger with a quirk of his lips. "If you weren't breathing, you'd be dead – which would mean that you weren't feeling any pain."

I tried not to smile. "Smartass", I said.

"Do you want up for dinner, or do you want to sleep?"

"I want up. I'm hungry. I'm worried about the morning sickness. I think I should eat a good meal tonight and not try to eat breakfast tomorrow. I think being sick to my stomach and having this stomach pain won't be a good mix."

"I'm just glad the construction is complete on the apartment", said Ranger. "It would be harder for you to sleep if they were still subdividing the living room."

"Can you get the men to move the rooms around this weekend?" I said. "After all, it would be nice to have the furniture in the new office, and the bedroom furniture in place for Julie. Her new furniture arrives on Sunday. Ella has already washed her bedding, so that is ready to go."

"She'll like her new room, I think."

"I think she will as well."

"Did you want to buy furniture for the baby's room?" said Ranger. "After all, we have the room now for it."

"I don't want to buy furniture until our last trimester. I don't want to jinx things."

Ranger looked at me. "Babe", he said. He didn't believe in jinxes, hocus pocus or superstition.

"Seriously", I said. "This pregnancy has had so many challenges already that I don't want to buy furniture until I know the baby is able to survive by itself outside the womb. The thought of buying furniture and then losing the baby is terrifying to me. It seems like we would be tempting fate unnecessarily, and I have found that fate has a way of yanking you back."

Ranger kissed me on my forehead. "I guess I can understand that", he said. "Fate does have a way of yanking you back whether you like it or not. However, I believe, in my heart, that this baby will be born and he or she will be healthy and whole. I believe this baby will go full-term. The nice part about having the ultrasound yesterday is that we have a closer due date than we did. Originally we thought the baby was due June twenty-eighth. Now we know the baby is due July fourth."

"We'll be able to tell the baby that the country is celebrating its birthday."

Ranger smiled. "That's one way to improve his or her self-confidence."

I laughed.

Ranger helped me to a sitting position and, when we had waited a moment, he helped me stand up. During the last three months I had learned that it was better for me not to just pop to my feet. After almost fainting a couple of times, Ranger had encouraged me to pause between positions, and this practice seemed to be working for me. The whirlies hadn't had a negative impact on me for a while.

"Did you happen to call my mother to tell her what the hospital said?"

"I did, and she told me that she had just taken a cake out of the oven for you. I arranged for her to come and visit tonight. Just to warn you, I think she is planning on bringing your grandmother and father. Your father hasn't seen the place and your grandmother and mother will be interested in the changes that we have made."

"That was nice of you to invite them."

"It was either that or have one of the patrol guys go to your parents' to pick up the cake, but your mother seemed relieved to be able to see you personally."

"My grandmother will be fascinated by the bruise on my abdomen."

"I'm sure", said Ranger. He was thinking about smiling. "I can't wait to hear the story that she'll concoct about the injury." My grandmother was a gossipmonger and loved spreading stories. Sometimes they were even true. My sister didn't provide much fodder for my grandmother to work with, but my life seemed to be a source of great excitement for my grandmother. The problem was that she liked to sensationalize the stories. After each time I shot someone in the line of duty, my grandmother told everyone that I was a killer. She wanted me to get teardrop tattoos under my eye to support her stories. She loved it when I blew up a car or my apartment caught fire. She adored it when I was shot. However, my stories didn't need sensationalizing. They were shocking enough on their own.

Unfortunately, some people believed my grandmother's stories. After she spread the 'details' of each of the shootings, people would cross the street when walking so as to protect their children from the big, bad Stephanie. After she spread the stories of my cars exploding, no one would park near me in the parking lot. People would rather park two lots down and walk to where they were going rather than to park next to me. That was saying something. I lived in New Jersey, and we didn't walk for anything.

So although my grandmother often made me laugh, I didn't think what she said about me was often funny. I chose to laugh about it anyway. I thought that, if I didn't laugh, I would cry and the stories weren't worth that. After all, my grandmother was just trying to have some fun and to liven up an otherwise boring existence.

I felt bad, in many ways, for my grandmother. She was full of life. Her body was failing her where her mind was not, and I suspected that she didn't recognize the old person staring back at her when she looked in the mirror. She loved the shock value of almost any event, and she loved being the center of attention in the way that she was when she had a particularly juicy bit of gossip.

My mother was almost the complete opposite to my grandmother. Whereas my grandmother was a bit flighty, my mother was solid and dependable, and she didn't sensationalize anything. However, she had little imagination and often fell prey to my grandmother's stories.

My father, like my mother, was someone you could count on. He very rarely got upset, and was stable and reliable. While I suspected that he often dreamed of my grandmother dying – by his own hand when my grandmother was particularly upsetting – he was too honorable to act upon his impulses. Didn't stop him from dreaming about it though, and when my grandmother said something particularly inflammatory, you could almost see my father plotting out the murder.

My grandmother lived with my parents' in a neighborhood nicknamed 'the Burg', in a small duplex on a quiet side street. I had lived in it for the first twenty years of my life, and it would always represent home to me.

In the house, my mother's domain was the kitchen. There were always appetizing smells coming from the kitchen and good food was always created there. I could just imagine the sweet smell of the pineapple upside-down cake that was being baked, and I could just imagine my grandmother's excitement at coming to our apartment after dinner. Ranger, prior to settling down with me, hadn't had many people up to his place. Lula called his building the Batcave, and I could see why. Ranger purposely kept civilians out of his building. Even within his building there were few people who had seen his apartment. Tank, his Vice-President of Operations, right-hand man and best friend, was one person who had seen his place. Ella and Luis, Ranger's housekeeper and her husband, the building's custodian, were two other people. I was the fourth. We were the only people ever to have seen his place since it had been built.

Since I moved in, Ranger had opened his apartment up to more people. My mother and grandmother had seen it. Connie and Lula had seen it. Morelli had seen it. Ranger's sister had seen it, and Ranger's daughter had seen it. We were planning on having the rest of the Manoso clan to see it on the thirtieth of December. Ranger was so private about his apartment, actually, that his family all started to cry when we invited them. Apparently they had been feeling left out when they had never been invited to see the place, and Ranger's mother's comment was that she thought she never would.

His apartment had been a huge surprise to Connie and Lula, and a lesser surprise to the rest of our guests. Ranger was a hard and disciplined man. His only weakness and exhibited softness was with me. When you met him, you immediately thought of someone who was able to survive in the wild comfortably, someone who would scare away predators with a single glare. You thought of someone who ate bugs and slept on the hard ground. You didn't think of someone who lived in luxury.

But that was what his apartment was. You entered the flat and to your right was a large chef's kitchen. Stainless steel appliances, granite counters, dark wood cabinets – the kitchen had it all from a warming drawer to a fridge hooked up to a water line so that cold water and ice was available constantly.

The kitchen was divided from the dining room by a breakfast bar. That was where Ranger and I most often ate our meals. The dining room was open to a large living room. Just the week before, we had subdivided that space to add an additional two rooms on the other side of the living room. One of those rooms was to be an office while the other was to be Julie's room.

Coming back to the front door to the apartment, to the left was a powder room. Also on the left were two doors. One was to the master suite, a grouping of rooms that contained an enormous bathroom, a large dressing room, and the bedroom itself. Also on that side of the apartment was another room. It used to be the den but was soon going to be the nursery.

All in all, the apartment was much larger than the house I grew up in and was the most luxurious apartment I had ever seen. Our new apartment would be more so. When I came out for dinner, I noticed that Ranger had brought up the blueprints for our apartment from his office. I could only assume that he was planning on showing my parents and grandmother the plans for the new place.

Ella had made us a beef stir fry for dinner. She had sent up a bowl of steaming jasmine rice, and a sizzling bowl of stir fry. There were lots of vegetables and strips of beef and cashews in the dish, and my mouth watered. I was especially looking forward to the vegetables in the sauce. I knew from experience that the sauce was the perfect blend of sweet and salty and the vegetables were just the right amount of cooked crunchiness, and I could hardly wait until I was able to taste some of it again.

Ranger indicated that I should sit, and he got out plates and cutlery, and poured us each a glass of milk. He soon sat down beside me and passed me the bowl of rice. I took a little and handed the bowl to Ranger, but I took a much larger helping of stir fry and ladled it over top of the rice. "Ella is such a good cook that I will miss it when she is no longer cooking for us", I said as I took my first bite and groaned. Ella currently served Ranger and me breakfast and dinner in the apartment, although we had lunch in the break room with the rest of the staff. When we moved to the new apartment, however, Ranger and I would be making our own breakfast and dinner. We would still have the option of eating in the staff lounge, but with having a family we had decided that we'd prefer to make our own food and just eat lunches in the staff lounge.

"I'm actually looking forward to cooking", said Ranger. "The only reason I don't cook now is because I don't have time. With the new organizational structure of the staff, however, I should have opened up enough time to be able to do things such as look after my own cooking. Between cooking and spending time with family, however, I don't think I'll have time to do much else. I still intend for us to have someone in three times a week to do the laundry and the ironing and the cleaning of the apartment. We will both be too busy to do anything other than have someone in to do the housework."

"I've never felt any great love for cleaning", I said, "so that suits me fine. While I like having things clean, I'm not someone who has to do the work myself."

"I feel the same way", said Ranger. "I will enjoy cooking, however."

"Have you put any further thought into having Mellie look after our baby when he or she is born?" Amelia – or Mellie, as she asked us to call her – was formerly in the army, and we found her when we were picking her up as a skip. Vets aren't treated very well in this country, and Amelia had been literally starving and almost homeless when she had been caught stealing a bag of hamburger buns for her dinner. Her cooperation with the guys picking her up and remorse over what had happened combined with her relief to be put in jail so that she had three square meals a day made an impression on the patrol staff. They returned her to the system but talked to Ranger about her. It worked out well. Ranger had just then been looking to hire a female bodyguard and Mellie's background meant that she was well qualified for the role. He interviewed her in jail and offered her a job, and paid for her bail. She said her life improved dramatically after being picked up by Hal and Hector. When her new supervisor took her to her home and saw the conditions she was living in, he moved her out and into a studio apartment above his garage and his wife offered to cook for her in exchange for Mellie cleaning up the kitchen. So with one action Mellie had a clean and safe place for her to live and good and plentiful food to eat. Dave's wife took her shopping for clothes and Mellie had more clothes than just the two outfits she had previously, and she had an income and was saving for a car. She had, however, admitted to Ranger and me that she'd rather be a daycare worker. She loved kids but was too old to have her own. We had both encouraged her to follow her dreams and to take early childcare educational courses. We told her that you never knew when you'd be able to use the education. However, privately we thought we might be able to use Amelia as our nanny. In the meantime, she was learning how to be an effective bodyguard. Apparently she was taking to the lessons and training like a duck to water, and the Manager of Personal Security was thrilled to have her on staff. I didn't think he would be nearly as thrilled when he found out that we were hiring Amelia on a permanent basis to guard our children.

"I know that you've been enjoying your time with her."

"I have. She's a very kind and a very good person, a person with a lot of integrity and honor. I think I would like to have her join the family."

"That is my impression as well. I have started talking to Dave about it."

"Oh, boy. What did he say?"

"He was disappointed for his sake and happy for ours and Amelia's. Like us, he likes her as a person and thinks that she will settle in well with our family. He said that she has coordinated well with his, and both he and his wife like having her as part of their family. He suggested that we talk to Mellie sooner rather than later. He said that it was his impression that she was happy, but she was worrying about wanting to work in childcare. She didn't want to let us down in a way that she was afraid she might if she left the company to look after babies."

"Maybe that's a service you should offer", I said with a smile. "You would have the best trained nannies around."

Ranger's lips quirked up. "I'll branch out in a number of areas, but childcare is not one of them."

I grinned. "When are you planning on telling Mellie?"

"I was thinking tomorrow. Do you want to be there for that?"

"You mean that you'll let me up to talk to her?"

"I was thinking that I would bring her up to the apartment. Then, if she didn't mind, she could stay and visit with you for a bit. It will stop you from getting too bored. After all, reading 'What to Expect When You're Expecting' is an interesting read, but I'm sure it won't keep you entertained for hours, and I have to spend a large chunk of time in the office tomorrow to make up for not spending time there this afternoon."

"I'm sorry."

Ranger smiled softly. "Not your fault, babe", he said. "It was the fault of the policeman who shot the robber. I'm still angry about that."

"I thought you didn't do anger." Ranger believed that there was no room for anger in life. He believed it was an unproductive emotion that stopped one from acting appropriately to a situation.

"I don't believe in it", said Ranger with a small, rueful smile, "but whether I believe in it or not, I seem to feel it when you are threatened. I have found that it is the only time when I give in to it."

I smiled. It was admissions like that which made me realize how much he loved me.

I finished my meal and almost licked my plate clean. Dinner had been good – and even better, it was staying down. I smiled in relief. With the discomfort of my torso, it would be painful to vomit. I wasn't looking forward to the next morning. I had thrown up every morning for the past six weeks, and I didn't imagine the next morning would be any different.


	9. Chapter 9

My father loved the apartment. My parents and my grandmother loved the plans for our new place. My grandmother loved the bruise left from the impact of the bullet. My mother shuddered when she saw it, but my grandmother wanted to know what it felt like.

"At first, when you are hit, it feels like a sledgehammer had been smashed into your body", I said. My grandmother was sitting on the edge of her seat in interest, her nose quivering, and she reminded me of my hamster when I took the raisin package out of the cupboard and he realized that he was receiving the bounty of a raisin in his food dish. "Then, the pain receded slightly so that it just feels like you have a very bad bruise and that you've done a hundred sit-ups when you haven't trained and worked up to doing that many."

Grandma's eyes sparkled. "It was a good thing that you were wearing your bulletproof jacket."

I smiled. "It was very lucky that Ranger had bought me one. I'm sure that, when he did, he hadn't thought that it would be used to protect me during a bank robbery."

"Did it leave a mark on the leather?" said Grandma.

"Yes, it did", I said. "It punctured the leather and pierced the bulletproof panel but didn't go through. That is why there is a tiny wound where the bullet hit me."

"Can I see the coat?" said my grandmother.

Ranger retrieved the jacket and my grandmother inspected the hole. "That isn't going to make a very good story", she said. "I'll tell everyone that the bullet shredded the jacket. That's a much better story."

"And a much more implausible one", I said. "Bulletproof jackets don't shred from the impact of a bullet."

"Yes, but most people wouldn't know that", said Grandma.

"How's Rex?" said my mother as she frantically tried to change the subject from me getting shot. I knew that the subject upset her. She hated it when I was in danger and was grateful that, because of the pregnancy, I was unable to skip trace any longer. Up until Ranger and I had sat down and talked to her about the minimal danger presented to me when I was skip tracing, she had thought that skip tracing was the most dangerous occupation that I could have faced. She has since decided that being the target for a knife-throwing performer, and maybe even an underwater photographer that specialized in taking nature shots of sharks, were more dangerous jobs. While she wasn't exactly comfortable with what I did for a living, she was more relaxed about it than she had been prior to our conversation with her.

"Rex is good", I said. "I don't know what he likes better – his hamster wheel, or crawling through the tubes that Ranger bought him." Rex had run on his hamster wheel daily, but more recently Ranger had bought him tubes to crawl through. Rex loved them and would often be found in one of the tubes. I thought if I hadn't already realized that I had loved him, I would have realized it when Ranger's face flushed after giving me the tubes to place in Rex's cage. Ranger had been embarrassed to have been caught out in caring for a small creature and looking after his needs and comfort like he had my hamster, but I knew he had done it just as much for me as he had for Rex. He knew that I cared for my pet, and he wanted my pet to be happy just so that I was happy.

"Where do you park your cars?" asked my father. My father loved cars of all types, although he had a definite preference for American-made cars and trucks. He owned a taxi himself, and he had a few regular fares that he drove to and from the train station each day. Before he had retired and started to drive a cab, he had worked for the post office.

"We have a two-level underground parking garage", said Ranger. "When the new tower is built, we will building a three-level underground parking garage underneath, and will tie the two parking garages together. It will ease the strain on the current garage. Since most people have their own cars and there are the fleet cars, people constantly have to park next door at the private lot."

"That's where we parked this evening", said my dad.

"The new parking garage will have space for sixty cars. This works out to one space per apartment with two assigned to our housekeeper's and custodian's place, and another two to our Vice-President of Operations. Stephanie and I will have four dedicated spots. Our current garage only has space for twenty cars, and there are nine dedicated spaces currently. Steph and I, of course, have dedicated spaces, as do my two Vice-Presidents, my Chief Financial Officer, my housekeeper and her husband, the custodian. The last two are because they often have to purchase things for the building and are constantly transferring things from their cars to the various offices. The custodian in particular does so, as Luis often does the shopping for his wife."

"What kind of cars are the fleet cars?"

"We generally drive Ford SUVs. They are reliable, comfortable, and affordable. They make a good fleet car. We have an agreement with the Ford dealership that they will provide the cars to us at a cut rate for leasing as long as we provide security services to them. We did a great system design and have been providing service to them for the last three years. It has worked out well. They lease cars to us at cost and, now that the security system has been installed, there are very few costs on our side associated with monitoring it. It's a win/win that we are both happy with."

"That makes sense", said my dad. He looked around. "Helen had told me that your place was nice and that Steph was staying in a good spot, but I am glad to see it myself. You are taking care of Stephanie well, aren't you?"

Ranger thought about smiling. "I like to think so", he said.

I smiled. "He is, Dad. I can't imagine anyone taking care of me better than Ranger does."

"If you are building another office tower, your company must be very successful", said my father.

"We're doing alright", said Ranger. "We are certainly very busy. I know that Stephanie herself has been bringing in a lot of business. We have now signed on two police departments and are in the process of signing on a mutual fund company to benefit from Steph's research skills. She has impressed each of those people with what she can find out, and the Sales Department has been hearing such good things about the Research Department that they are marketing research as a separate service that we offer clients. Stephanie's department is growing astronomically as a result, and in the last week has taken on another full-time person and we will hopefully have another part-time person added to the team by the end of January. This will move her staff complement up to the equivalent of three full-time people, and I can see that we will be adding more over the next year to meet the demand. We just won't be able to keep up otherwise. It will become even more imperative to be staffed appropriately when the baby is born. Stephanie won't want to be doing overtime while trying to look after a baby."

"Are you planning on going back to work?" said Grandma. "I would think, with Ranger being so successful, that you would stay home with the kids."

"No", I said. I immediately felt guilty for wanting to go out to work. "I like working and would miss it if I didn't have the office to go to or if I didn't chase skips each day."

"Valerie doesn't miss it", said my mother.

I tensed, and Ranger kissed the top of my head. He knew that any comparison to Valerie was a hot topic for me. He also knew that I was already feeling the mother's guilt that often women felt when they had the choice and chose to go out to work. After all, women in the Burg never chose to go out to work. If they had the option, they always chose to stay home. In Burg culture, that was the way it was done. "Valerie is a different person than I am", I said.

My mother looked at me and smiled. "That's true", she said. "It's a good thing as well. Valerie would never be able to afford childcare."

I laughed. It was true. Valerie had five kids – three under the age of three, and childcare would be expensive. As a struggling and largely ineffectual lawyer, her husband didn't make enough money to cover the extra cost of childcare. He barely made enough money to support themselves.

Ranger and I had frequently tried to envision what Albert would be successful at doing. He was awkward and not particularly smart, unathletic and pudgy, but loveable in his own way. He reminded me of a grown-up, live teddy bear. I had never met anyone who tried as hard as Albert did. We had thought about offering him a job at Rangeman, but there was nowhere we could park him that he would be useful at. We then tried to think of another job that would be good for him, but we couldn't come up with anything he would excel in. It made it hard – Albert himself had said that he wanted to look for another job, but he couldn't figure out anything that he'd be good at either.

"It's too bad his business isn't more profitable", said my mother. "I don't understand it. After all, he's a lawyer and that's one of those professions that you never thought of someone being short of work with."

"That's true", I said, "but his office is located above a Laundromat, which makes it hard to find, and because of the stairs it would be hard for any disabled person to get to his office to talk about civil suits." I didn't point out that he had never won a case, and that kind of track record didn't speak well of the lawyer's skills.

"That's true", said my mother. "I offered to buy them groceries the other day. Val was horrified and refused the help."

"I can see that", I said. "I would refuse the help as well. Like me, you have raised Val to be proud and independent. That's a good thing."

"I suppose. I was wondering whether I would offer to take the kids in so that Val could go to work", said my mother. "They need the money badly, and I think it is the only way that they will be able to afford to have Val working full-time."

"They do need the money", I said, "but do you want to be locked in to taking care of her kids for the next fifteen years? You had your children."

"That's true, but I have to do something. It is hard standing by and seeing them struggle. Besides, it's not for the next fifteen years. I would only have to look after them until they are in grade one. After they are all in school full-time, Val and Albert will be able to afford before- and after-school daycare and, by then, Angie will be able to look after her siblings for her parents."

"If you feel up to it", I said, "then it is a good thing. Three little ones under the age of three would be demanding for anyone. They are tiring. Are you sure you want that responsibility?"

"I like having them around", said my mother. "I could get a minivan so that I could drive them places, and I have your grandmother there to help me."

"You have forgiven Grandma for getting Angie to help her order nude pictures over the internet?" I said.

Grandma glared at me. "You had to mention that, didn't you?" she said.

I tried not to laugh. My mother's face had taken on a disgusted look. "Did you know that I'm still getting daily selfies taken by strange men? There is one man in particular that I swear looks like your cousin, Vinnie."

"Maybe it is Vinnie", I said. "Taking naked selfies sounds like something he would do."

"If it's Vinnie, I feel sorry for him", said my mother. "He is particularly small."

"Must take after his mother", said my father. Vinnie was my cousin on my father's side, the son of my father's brother and sister-in-law.

I laughed.

My mother collected the plates and carried them into the kitchen to leave on the counter. "We should probably go", she said as she came back. "I know that Steph has had her feet up, but she's also been sitting up for the last hour, and I'm sure she wants to lie down for a while."

"Wants to? No", I said with a grimace.

"Needs to, then", said my mom with a smile.

"Steph and I were thinking, if it is convenient for you, that we'd come for Christmas dinner", said Ranger. "I know that we had talked about it previously, and we had said that we would like to have Christmas morning at our apartment. We'd still like to do that. But we were thinking that we would alternate Christmas dinners between your family and mine. This year we would spend Christmas dinner with your family and next year we will spend it with mine. Similarly we will spend Christmas Eve with the other person. We won't this year since we need to remain in town to cover for Tank's holidays, but next year we will spend Christmas Eve with your family and Christmas dinner with mine, and switch it the year afterwards. This will let us see both families over the Christmas holidays."

"That would be wonderful", said my mother. Her face took on a glow as she thought about the upcoming holiday dinner with her whole family around her.

"We were thinking that, since my family always holds a big family reunion on Thanksgiving, we'll celebrate Independence Day with your family. Except, potentially, this year, since that's the day that the baby is due."

"Maybe the baby will be early and you'll be able to bring the baby to the party at the same time", said my mother. Her face started to glow with happiness even more.

"We thought splitting our time like this made more sense", I said, "since our family traditionally holds a huge family reunion on July fourth, and Ranger's family holds a reunion on Thanksgiving."

"That sounds wonderful", said my grandmother. "When you come for Christmas, I have some pictures to show you." My mother made a choking sound. "They are life-sized and realistic. They make Vinnie look miniscule by comparison."

"It's time to go", said my mother frantically.

I laughed.


	10. Chapter 10

The next day I woke up with my legs and arms entwined with Ranger's. His watch alarm was going off and he was twisting around, trying to turn it off before I woke up. As he turned it off, I opened one eye. "It's dark out", I said.

"It usually is at five-thirty in the morning", said Ranger with amusement in his voice.

"It shouldn't be allowed."

"For it to be dark out?"

"No, for it to be dark out when you are getting up. It's inhumane."

"Uh-hunh", he said. He slowly started to extricate himself from my hold.

"No-o-o", I said. I strengthened my hold. "I'm saving you."

"Saving me from what?"

"From the darkness monsters. They will eat you."

"I think you're dreaming."

"Nope. I'm wide awake."

"Tell me about the darkness monsters", he said. He gave up struggling to get free for a moment, and I dropped his hand to his midsection and grasped hold. "They eat you", I said as I started to rub.

I felt a rumble of laughter from Ranger's chest. "That sounds like something better left for bedtime, which your stomach isn't upset", he said. "I would hate for you to throw up while the monster was eating me. It would be disastrous to my self-esteem."

I laughed and stopped rubbing. He was right. As much as I was interested in making love, I didn't know if my gag reflex could take it.

He dropped a kiss on my nose. "How are you feeling?" he said.

"The same." I sighed. "I'll be glad when I am over this morning sickness."

"It's receding. You were able to eat a lunch yesterday, weren't you? And you ate almost a normal-sized dinner last night."

"That's true." I paused. "Thank you for being my cheerleader."

He kissed me again. "We all need them from time to time."

I nestled more firmly into his arms and kissed his pecs. Then, with a final kiss on the top of my head, Ranger twisted free of my grasp. "Have a good workout", I said.

"Go back to sleep, babe", said Ranger. He kissed me on my forehead and pulled up the duvet. I was asleep before he left for the gym.

I didn't wake up again when Ranger walked back into the apartment. I didn't wake up while he had his shower or when he got dressed. I didn't wake up when Ella brought up Ranger's breakfast. Ranger kissed me awake at ten in the morning, and he brought me a bottle of flat ginger ale to settle my stomach. I told him that he was my hero.

Ranger smiled slightly as he helped me sit up. I leaned against the wooden headboard and Ranger adjusted the pillows behind my back so that I was more comfortable. "We are replacing our bedroom furniture, aren't we?" I said.

"That's the plan. Why?"

"I'm wondering whether it makes sense to buy a padded headboard. It would make it far more comfortable to lean against when we are sitting in bed."

Ranger thought about smiling. "Sitting isn't what I normally think of doing when I am in bed."

"Hey, you had your chance this morning, buddy."

Ranger smiled. "I was talking about sleeping. What were you talking about?"

"The night monsters", I said. "They only come out at night though."

"I have a special lure that brings them out in the day."

"Really? Tell me more about this lure?"

Ranger laughed and kissed my nose.

I grinned at him, and then took a sip of my ginger ale. It stayed down, so I took another sip. I was thirsty and I thought the sugars would be good for me.

"I woke you up because I have arranged for Mellie and Dave to come up so that we can talk to Mellie about the possibility of being our nanny. Dave is coming as her supervisor so that she knows that this will still be a protection detail – it will just have childcare added to the list of responsibilities."

"That sounds good."

"I figured that forty-five minutes would give you time to shower and get dressed and to see if you could hold something down."

"Okay."

"I met with John this morning, from HR. He will be starting on Monday, and he is very enthusiastic about his new position. He asked me for the job descriptions of the people that he needs to hire for, and the file folder of potential employees. I gave it to him, but I also told him that he doesn't have to work on the weekend."

"That's true. That is very gung-ho of him, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is."

"What positions is he hiring for first?"

"I was thinking another female bodyguard, a recruitment specialist, a number of security guards, and the position which is part-time cybergeek and part-time researcher. I have suggested that he look at the computer science programs for a cybergeek/researcher. It is a good opportunity for someone."

"It is."

"I'm hoping he hires all females into the positions. Jeanne Ellen is giving me a bit of a hard time." Jeanne Ellen was a former girlfriend of Ranger's and, until recently, had been the bounty hunter for Les Sebring, another bondsman in the Trenton area. Les, however, had recently let her go and had hired Rangeman to capture all his skips. Jeanne Ellen had been furious. Since she had tried to get hired on when she and Ranger had been going out together and since her resulting hissy fit when Ranger had refused was the reason they broke up, Ranger had been able to stay away from her until now and I could tell that he wasn't happy to have to deal with her again in the future.

"What is she doing?"

"She has decided to sue me for sexual discrimination for not having women on staff. If my clients get wind of this, I could lose business. Jeanne Ellen, I don't think, will care."

"So you are hiring more women?"

"I am, although I still will insist on the women being former military for all Operations positions other than research and cybersecurity and security guards, and I will insist on the ERT members to be former Special Operations staff. This means, by nature of default, that the positions are only open to male staff. Jeanne Ellen doesn't have a military background and wouldn't qualify for any position that we'd hire other than as a security guard. I will have HR offer her the position. I don't think she'd go for it as the job pays much less than being a bounty hunter. On another note, I wanted to bounce something by you."

"Oh, oh."

Ranger thought about smiling. "Nothing nefarious. Currently, Ella and Luis and I are the only people who live in the building allowed guests. This is partly because the residences are located in the office building and I want to limit the number of people who are walking around in the offices. When we move to the other tower, the residences will be separate from the offices. I still don't want civilians walking around the offices. However, there is no reason, I think, to limit the people in the residences. If staff want to have guests, I think they should be allowed guests. And if they want to live there with their partners, I think they should be allowed to do so. What do you think?"

"I think that is a good idea. I think it will make things happier for staff if they are allowed to have guests or partners stay in their apartment. Just make sure that people all understand that, when they are on call, they have to respond within ten minutes. That's the key."

"That's true. I've also been thinking about parking."

"What about it?"

"The parking lot on across the street is up for sale. It would provide more parking for staff, which would be a good thing. I'm worried that, as our company grows, our need for parking will be exceeded."

"Can we afford that?"

"Can we afford not to? Seriously, I was thinking that we could buy the property now and, when the residences have been built, we could keep the property as a parking lot. This will give us the option of building another tower in the future if we start to run out of room again. I think it would be very forward thinking of us and, to tell you the truth, land is relatively cheap. It wouldn't be a huge financial drain."

"You said that we'd pay back the construction of the residences within two years, didn't you?"

"That's my guess. Our mortgage is for a three-year term, but our company is doing well and I anticipate that we'll have the money to pay down our mortgage before the end of the term. If we add the purchase of the parking lot, we would still be able to pay it off in the three years."

"Then I think we should buy the parking lot. You are right in that it makes sense when you think about future growth. I can see at some point having an Operations tower and an Administrative and Support Services tower."

Ranger's lips quirked up. "Our company is growing so fast that I can see that as well."

"It's an exciting time in your life."

"Yes, it is."

A well of gratitude washed over me and tears came to my eyes. "Thank you for letting me go on this ride with you." I sniffled and brushed the tears away.

Ranger kissed me on my nose again. "It's an exciting time for me because you are with me. Before we were together I was pleased with the growth, but I wasn't happy. Not like I am right now, anyway." He hugged me tightly, and then kissed away the tears. "I love you, babe."

"I love you too. So damn much."

Ranger held me while I cried for a while. He seemed to understand without me saying it that I was crying out of gratitude. I was crying because the love in me was spilling over and I couldn't contain it any longer. And I was crying because I was so incredibly happy. I couldn't remember ever being as happy as I was at that moment. I thought it was a good thing that Ranger didn't expect an explanation. I didn't know if I could justify my tears without sounding like a crazy person.

After wetting Ranger's shirt, I hopped into the shower and quickly shampooed, conditioned and washed my body. I didn't shave. I thought that, even if my sore muscles would have allowed it, my stomach wouldn't. I had found in the last six weeks that bending over first thing in the morning was sure to make me throw up. To shave, I found that I had to have another shower in the evening when I had the ability to bend over without losing my dinner. However, with the bone bruise I knew that I wouldn't be shaving for another few weeks, and I was just glad that it was winter and my hairy legs would be hidden behind long pants.

As I emerged from the bathroom, Ranger walked out of the den where he was working and came through to the dressing room. "Do you need help?" he said.

"I was wondering how I was going to do this", I said with a smile. "I have to bend over to put my underwear and pants on, and right now that seems impossible."

Ranger thought about smiling. "Babe", he said.

I pulled a pair of yoga pants and a pair of panties from the drawers, and paired it with a t-shirt and hoody of Ranger's. "I'm getting to the point where I need to buy maternity clothes", I said. "I wonder if they have a lot of black clothes."

Ranger smiled. "I think, for the sake of your wardrobe, you could wear colors in the office. You should get a bye with being pregnant."

"All I can say is that it's a good thing that I like wearing black."

Ranger laughed. "It's my favorite color and I think it looks far classier than gray or blue for security guards. Besides that, it doesn't show blood the same as any of the other colors."

"I kind of gathered that it was your favorite color", I said with a grin. "It is fairly similar to the TPD uniforms as well, so that gives people a bit of unconscious respect."

"That's true. I think people do take us more seriously because the line between us and the police is a little blurred."

"I wasn't going to require Mellie to wear a uniform. You weren't going to either, were you?"

"No. I think it would be better for our child to think of Mellie as a nanny rather than a bodyguard."

"Good."

Ranger held my panties so that I could step into them. As he pulled them up he kissed the swell of my tummy. He couldn't pull up my panties all the way. The elastic didn't stretch wide enough at the top, and Ranger smiled. He rolled the waistband down below my tummy, and then pulled up my yoga pants. They stretched, but they barely stretched.

"It's hard to believe that these pants are my biggest", I said.

"You definitely need new clothes", said Ranger. "Let's go this weekend."

"You're going to let me up?" I said with a smile.

"Honestly? Now that I've calmed down a bit and now that I know that you aren't bleeding, I think it will be okay to go out for short periods. I'd still prefer for you to keep your feet up today and for you to rest as much as you can, but I'm not panicking the same way today as I was yesterday. It's just that yesterday, the 'what-ifs' got to me. That's not a game that I play often. I don't let myself. But yesterday they got to me." He stood and gathered me into a hug. "I could have lost you yesterday. If it wasn't for your jacket, I would have."

I nestled into his arms. "I know. It scared me too."

"I feel bad for Arlen. He will now have to live without his wife. He will know that he led her to her death simply by letting her join him in the heist. He will have to live with that for the rest of his life and, if he feels anything like I do, I don't know how he will go on."

"While I know that I _could_ live without you, I also know that I wouldn't _want_ to."

"I was scared yesterday when I heard that you had hit the panic button."

"I had hoped that you would come with an ERT. I didn't know how it was going to go with so many hostages. I didn't know if we'd need someone with hostage negotiation skills or not, and I knew that you have trained people on staff to deal with that kind of situation."

"When we heard the panic alarm, we started to listen to the police scanner. There wasn't any mention of anything going on, so we checked where you were located. I was talking to you and mustering the ERTs at the same time. I had Hal hand out assignments and brief everybody based on the information that I was texting him. We were able to respond to your panic alarm within ten minutes."

"That was a great response time. Who called the police?"

"The control room. The TPD arrived late to the party, but we didn't want to wait for them."

"It was another chance for Rangeman staff to learn how to work as a unit."

"True. I could deal with a few less chances though."

I smiled as he pulled the t-shirt over my head and helped me thread my arms through the sleeves. He then held the hoody for me so that I could put it on. "I'm sorry I don't have colors for you to wear", he said. "All I own is black."

"As I said, I luckily like to wear black. In fact, after meeting you, it became my new favorite color."

Ranger gave a half-smile.

I stepped into his arms again and had a cuddle, then stepped away. "You know what the good news is?"

"What's that?"

"I haven't thrown up today."

"That's progress."

"I know, right?"


	11. Chapter 11

Ranger put the kettle on for a cup of peppermint tea for me, and started a pot of coffee.

"Have you been working all day in the den?" I said.

"Except for when I gave the information to John, I have. It actually isn't a bad thing to do. I find I get more done from the den than I do from my office. There are fewer interruptions, although there were more this morning than there are normally just because Tank is on holiday. I forget sometimes how much Tank handles, and when he goes on holiday it hits me again how good he is at his job."

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder?"

Ranger gave a half-smile. "I already appreciate him, but it does make me appreciate him even more."

I laughed.

Ranger pushed over a plate with a raisin scone on it. At the start of my pregnancy I discovered a fondness for Ella's raisin scones. She made them herself, and they had just the right amount of buttery lightness and raisins in them. They were, at times, the only thing I wanted and I had at least one of them a day.

Ranger got out the immersion blender, the yogurt, some milk and a banana. He blended it all together to make me a banana smoothie and passed me my breakfast before washing the immersion blender and putting it away.

Banana smoothies were something else that I had discovered a fondness for. There was something about the bananas and the yogurt mix. Ranger had added vanilla to the concoction today, and between it all it satisfied a craving that I didn't even know I had.

I smiled at him as I lifted the smoothie and took a sip. "You always know what I need before even I do."

Ranger smiled. "It's not hard. You've wanted the same thing every day for the last week."

I laughed.

I nibbled away on the scone and ate half of it and all of my smoothie before my stomach told me that I had better stop. A few minutes later, there was a knock on our door and Ranger went to answer it. Dave and Mellie walked in. Ranger put out cream, milk and sugar, and poured the two visitors each a coffee. He took the tea bags out of my peppermint tea and passed me the cup. We all walked into the living room and sat down.

Ranger turned to look at Mellie as I swung my feet up. I wanted to be able to go out clothes shopping the next day, and I knew that Ranger wouldn't let me if I didn't take care of myself and take it easy. "Mellie, Dave and Steph and I wanted to talk to you about something", he said.

An anxious look settled over her face and she took a sip of her coffee to hide her shaking.

"We have an assignment for you", said Ranger. "It's a long assignment and is one that I want you to think very carefully about. If you don't want to do it and would prefer to stay a bodyguard, we understand and can accommodate that. However, if you would consider this position we would be grateful."

"You're not firing me?"

Ranger looked startled. "Why would we fire you?"

Amelia turned red. "It's just that I'm so happy, and I have found in the past that happiness like what I'm feeling doesn't last."

Ranger gave a half-smile. "Hopefully this assignment will make you happier."

She took a deep breath. "Okay."

Ranger thought about smiling. "As you know, Steph and I are having a baby." Amelia didn't say anything. "Steph is planning on going back to work after the baby is born. This means that we'll need a nanny. However, we want this nanny to also be a bodyguard for the baby. In my travels, I have made many enemies and the nanny will need to know how to adequately guard the baby at the same time as caring for him or her. Would this be something you are interested in?" Amelia stared at Ranger, her mouth dropping open. "I know it's not working in a daycare, but we are looking for someone who can live with us, who can share cooking responsibilities, and someone who is willing to be a part of our family on an ongoing basis. We don't intend to change out nannies regularly but rather want someone who is available for a few years. We think, if you are interested, that you would be ideal for the role."

Tears started to fall down Amelia's face. "This would be a dream come true", she said.

"Until the baby is born", said Ranger, "we'd require a few things. First, that you continue to learn how to be an effective bodyguard. Dave says that you are excellent and have great instincts. There may missions that we have for you to do before the baby is born, but mainly you'll be in training for the next six months. First aid, self-defense, defensive driving, the usual training for a bodyguard. Being an effective bodyguard to the baby will be just as important as being a loving nanny. Second, that you continue to obtain your early childhood education certificate. You will need that information to look after our baby well. After the baby is born, we'd expect you to live with us. At first, you'll be staying in Julie's room. However, when we move to the new tower you will have your own suite. You'll be working Monday to Friday with a half day on Saturday, but we will need you to be a little flexible with your time. Some days we may need you to work late whereas other days we may need you to start early. When you aren't on the clock, we'd be happy if you join us for family time. Dave has said that you have quickly become a part of his family and we honestly think you will become a valuable member of ours just as fast."

"Your salary will remain the same", said Dave. "Ranger is hiring Rangeman at the going rate rather than hiring you directly. This means that your benefits and pension plan won't change. You will still be a part of the Personal Security team. You will just be on a long assignment."

"I also would like you to work with Steph in the lead-up to the baby's birth", said Ranger. "Not anything intense, but just to spend time with each other regularly so that when the baby is born, you have a close working relationship already. Just because Steph is intending to breastfeed for the first year, the two of you will be working closely together as you settle into a pattern."

"Would that be something that interests you?" I said.

Amelia sniffled. "I think", she said with an embarrassed swipe of her face, "that stealing those hamburger buns was the best decision I ever made."

"You will never go hungry again", said Ranger.

"If I had money, I would pay you for this opportunity. You don't have to give me a salary that is equal to what I am currently earning."

"Yet, that is what we are offering", said Ranger. "Of course, although you are earning the same salary you will be working a half day longer so you actually are earning less. However, we will be paying your boarding costs and we'll lease a car for your use. In the meantime, since I know you don't have a car and it doesn't make sense for you to purchase one for only six months, any time you need a car let Hal know and he'll lend you one of the fleet vehicles."

"I don't need a car", said Amelia. She looked at Dave. "Do you mind me catching a ride with you?"

"Not at all", said Dave.

"My courses are all online, so I don't need to get to class or anything."

"You're welcome to stay in your apartment until Ranger and Steph have their baby and you move in here", said Dave. "You don't have to give me notice. It will just be nice for the apartment to be used."

"So do you accept our offer?" said Ranger. "We definitely want you on staff, but if you prefer another assignment we can do that. It's just that you are our first choice of person to look after our baby."

"NO!" said Amelia. "I would LOVE to be your nanny."

I smiled. Ranger stood up. "I think, Dave, that we should let the two women talk together to hammer out any of the little details while we get back to work. Babe, I'll work out of my office downstairs. When you are finished, if you can send Mellie to let me know and I'll switch back to working out of the den here."

"Sounds good."

Ranger leaned over and gave me a kiss. I could see he was thinking about smiling, and I knew he was pleased to have Amelia as happy as she was. He liked taking care of people, and knowing what a rough life Amelia had been living prior to starting with Rangeman would make him especially happy to be able to help her.

Ranger and Dave left the apartment. "Do you want more coffee?" I said.

"Let me get it", said Amelia as she popped to her feet. "I'm so excited I can hardly sit still."

I smiled.

She poured herself another coffee and came through with it a few seconds later. "Is that why you encouraged me enroll in the childcare courses?" she said.

"When I met you, my gut instinct was that we could become good friends. I admired the fact that you came through a very challenging time in your life yet still remained positive and grateful for the little things. I admired the fact that you kept trying, despite being given a rough deal. I even admired that you only stole a package of hamburger buns despite being hungry. I haven't yet found one thing that I dislike about you. Ranger had the same reaction to you. I had been worried about our ability to find someone good to look after our baby, but after meeting you I wasn't worried any longer. We will be thrilled to have you become part of our family."

"How do you know that I will be any good at looking after your baby?"

"It's the little things. It was the way your eyes lit up when I first told you I was pregnant. Dave has told us how you treat his own kids, how you listen to them and take them seriously, how you have fun with them and how much love you have for them – even though you have only known them for a week. Dave said that, in the event it was needed, he had no doubt that you would put your life on the line to save his kids'. It's the way you talked about your own family and how much you miss them. Our kids will be lucky that you are in their lives."

"Won't you have a problem with me being in the house all the time?"

"We will need someone in the house. Why not you? I have to be honest. I've never had a roommate before, and I might need a little time to get used to it, just like you might need a little time to get used to it as well. I honestly think that we can make it work though. It may be a little unconventional, but we will create a relationship that works for all of us. With the easygoing and accommodating attitude that you have mixed with our desire to make this work, I think we'll be able to find a fit for all our needs."

"Is there anything that I can do prior to the baby being born?"

"Just do the best job you can in your studies, and learn from Dave. He is one of the best. If Ranger can get his head above water at work, he might do some of your lessons himself. While Dave is one of the best, Ranger is _the_ best and he's a good trainer as well. I know he'd like to offer some of your training, but it will all depend upon how swamped he is at work. Right now he's struggling."

"Is he still looking for staff?"

"Yes. He's looking for a female bodyguard to take your place, several security guards, and a number of administrative and support personnel. He figures the Rangeman staff will double in the next year, just judging by the work that is coming down the pipe."

"So I was lucky to start working at Rangeman when I did?"

"It is hard to get a job at Rangeman. We are known as the best of the best for a reason. Our staff is well-trained and we take pride in doing a good job. You should feel honored that Rangeman even looked at you, and you should be proud that you got a job with us, let alone that Ranger and I want you to care for our kids."

"Did you hire me specifically for this job?"

"No, we need a female bodyguard, and you were hired for that role. But then I met you, and I thought you would be a good member on our personal team. I talked about it with Ranger, and he agreed. Then came the hard part. We talked about it with Dave, and he wasn't so happy. He's been impressed by your skill and natural talent and didn't want to let you go. However, he knows that we need someone good to look after our baby and he agreed that you are the best person for the job. He was happy that Ranger intended to pay the company for your services, as it makes his bottom line look better. It took some fast-talking, but he agreed to let you work as a nanny. So he's unhappy for himself but is happy for you. He said that you love kids."

"I do. I had always wanted a few of my own and obviously can't. This is the next best thing." She popped to her feet again. "Do you want another cup of peppermint tea?"

"You don't need to serve me."

"Ranger said that we had to come up here so that you didn't have to be on your feet."

"He's a little anxious. I was shot yesterday, and he wants me to take it easy today."

"My God! You were shot? What happened? Where?"

I told her about the bank robbery and what happened with Arlen's wife. "It was horrible. I had nightmares all last night because of it. I slept late this morning, which is why we had such a late meeting." I showed her the bruise. "The doctor said that it's a bone bruise which is why it is so painful. I don't know how long they are supposed to last, but I hope that I will be completely over it when the baby is born."

"I hope so as well. I'm glad that you are relatively okay", said Amelia. "Bruises heal, but gunshot wounds are more challenging."

I laughed.


	12. Chapter 12

I found out that Amelia liked cooking pretty well everything and was willing to teach our baby how to cook. I told her that my cooking skills range from frozen lasagna to cold cereal, and she laughed. "I love to cook", she said. "It's been a long time since I have had the opportunity. I will, however, be cooking the Christmas turkey for Dave's family. Daniela's family is coming for dinner, and with having me cook the meal Dave and Daniela will be able to concentrate on their guests. I am looking forward to getting in the kitchen."

"I'm glad to hear that. Ranger loves to cook and is looking forward to having some time in the kitchen but, to be honest, if he doesn't get more help, he's going to be too busy to cook. And trust me, you don't want to rely on my cooking."

"What is your best meal that you cook?"

"Peanut butter and olive sandwiches", I said.

Amelia turned white. "I'd be happy to do the cooking for you", she said.

"Funny, that's most people's reactions to that meal", I said. "Ranger won't even try it."

"Imagine that."

I laughed.

"What do you envision your baby's day to be like?"

"At first, just responding to his or her needs. Sleep, eat, read to the baby, sing songs if you know them, cuddle them. As they start to grow, I'd imagine that you'd do a mixture of playing with the baby and letting the baby play by itself. I don't know because I have never had a kid, but I would suspect that teaching the baby how to amuse itself is just as important as reading to the baby. I do hope that you'll read to the baby every day. At night, I anticipate that Ranger and I will look after the baby. Ranger goes out of town frequently, and his schedule is basically one week out of town, five weeks here, and repeated throughout the year. When he is gone I will require a bit more support. I'm a little overwhelmed by the thought that I'll be a single mom that frequently. So in answer to your question, we hope that you'll be another mom. I've always thought that a baby grows up happier and healthier when there are lots of people to love them."

"Surely you want to be the only mom though, don't you?"

"Yes, I do, just like I want you to be the only Mellie. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure how it will all work. I don't know anyone who has had a nanny, nor have I ever had a baby. I'll be feeling my way on this just as much as you will be."

"I'll make sure that the baby prefers you over me."

"Heavens, no. I want the baby to be equally as happy with having you in their life as he or she is with me. Ranger and I are just trying to make this work for everybody – you as well as us. I don't know how it will work. What I do know is that for me to be happy, I still need to be able to work. I don't, however, want to give up on our baby having the best start possible. We will be paying someone to clean the house, and we'll pay for someone to do the laundry, and we're paying you to look after the baby and to help with the cooking. We will actually be paying more for me to work than I will earn through my salary. However, for the baby to be taken care of properly and for me to be taken care of properly, this is what we need to do."

"I won't have enough to do with just looking after the baby and cooking. May I also do the grocery shopping and the laundry?"

"I don't want to load you up with too many things to do."

"At first the baby will be sleeping a long time, and I will be bored. I hate being bored. As the baby gets older, we can always revisit the schedule then. However, I think it would be good for the baby to learn how to grocery shop or do the laundry. The only thing I might not be able to get to is the ironing."

"To tell you the truth, our clothes are mostly wash-and-wear. We only have about two things that need ironing each week and Ranger and I can do that."

"Please let me do the laundry and the grocery shopping as well. I love grocery shopping, and doing laundry is no big deal. I would have to do my own anyway, so throwing another couple of loads on is no problem at all. If you let me do that, I wouldn't feel so much like I was taking advantage of you."

I looked at her in shock. "Why do you think that you are taking advantage of us?"

"Come on – you are giving me my dream job and then paying me for it! Life doesn't get much better than that."

"Have you ever thought about being a nanny before? You're such a natural in the position."

"I thought of it, but nannies are usually paid minimum wage and I was hoping to earn a little more. This job will pay me over three times as much. Mixed with my army pension, I will be rolling in money. My parents would have been so proud of me. They had always hoped that I would find a job that I loved and that I could support myself doing."

"I'm glad that you are so pleased."

Amelia grinned again. "I should probably go back to work. Should I send Ranger up?" She stood.

"Would you please tell him that you have left but I am planning on having a nap? With having so many nightmares last night, I'm a little sleepy today."

"I have nightmares as well. Will that be a problem?"

"It's not a problem for us if you have nightmares. You are seeing the therapist, aren't you?"

"I have my first appointment on Monday."

"I hope that he is helpful to you. In answer to your question, it doesn't matter to us that you have nightmares. However, I hope you don't have them for long, as they aren't nice to have."

"I feel so weak for having nightmares."

"You aren't weak. You probably saw or heard some pretty nasty shit go down. It's okay to need some time to recover."

"It's been a year. I should be over this."

"The last time I shot someone it hit me very hard. I stress-ate and gained a lot of weight very fast, I had nightmares and wasn't sleeping, and I jumped at every little thing and started to cry at the drop of a hat. My family and friends all thought I was pregnant from the weight gain and the emotionality. I put pressure on myself to get better, and Ranger told me something very wise. He said that putting pressure on myself was just making things worse."

"How did you recover?"

"Ranger had me move into his apartment for a while so that he could keep his eye on me, and so that I had someone to talk to in the middle of the night when the bad dreams came. He got me working out each day rather than eating, and he gave me something to do by placing me at the research desk. I have to admit, it took me a long time before I could do my target practice without crying, and I screamed and swore at Ranger almost every time he made me practice my self-defense. But through it all I got better. It is hard recovering from trauma, but it is doable with the proper support. Gabriel is a supportive therapist. Ranger and I will also be supportive. There are a number of people in the company who want to be a support to you. Help is there. You just have to reach out and grab it with both hands."

"What do you know about Tank?"

I smiled. "Tank is the strong, silent type. He is an incredible person, honorable and kind. He has three cats that he rescued, and he dotes on his kitties. He is a hard worker and incredibly understanding. He doesn't take any crap, but he shouldn't have to either. He is stern but fair and he never asks anyone to do something he isn't willing to do himself."

"He seems like a good person."

"He's the best. He's Ranger's best friend, so you might be seeing him around the apartment a bit. It will be nice for Tank in that, when we move to the new apartments, he will have an apartment in the tower. He currently lives offsite."

"Does he have a girlfriend?"

"Not that I know of, but he's so private he could have a girlfriend and I would never know."

Amelia smiled. "He offered to work in the gym with me."

"He'd be a good person to teach you self-defense. I have worked with him. Not only is he a good teacher but, as he said to me, if I feel comfortable taking his 6'6" body down, I can take anybody down."

Amelia laughed.

A few minutes later I said goodbye to Amelia and I wandered off to bed. I whimpered as I lay down. My sore abdomen was getting to me but it was, as Amelia said, better than getting shot and punctured by the bullet.

I pulled up the duvet and curled into a fetal position on my side. I pulled over Ranger's pillow and buried my head into the fabric. As I smelled the scent of his Bulgari Green body wash, his shampoo and him, my pulse rate settled and my body relaxed and I fell asleep.

I woke up two hours later from a nightmare and gingerly pulled myself into a sitting position. The apartment was quiet and I wasn't sure if Ranger was working in the den or whether he was still working out of his main office. I stood and padded through to the den. Ranger smiled at me as he looked up from where he was working on the computer. "Did you have a good sleep?" he said.

"I guess so."

He pushed back from the desk so that I could sit on his lap. I lay my head on his shoulder and sniffed his scent. It was reassuring to me, and it grounded me in a way that I needed.

"What's wrong?" he said quietly. He smoothed my hair away from my face rhythmically.

"I just had a nightmare."

"What about?"

"Pete Brodie." Pete was the last man that I had killed and was the person that Ranger had needed to give me extra support on.

"What about him?"

"The nightmare was the same as what really happened but our child was there, and Pete had a gun trained on him or her instead of me."

"What brought on that nightmare? You haven't dreamed of him for a few months, have you?"

"I often dream of him when you are away on business. However, I haven't had a dream about him for about two months."

"I'm sorry that you dream of him when I'm not there. Why do you think that is?"

"Honestly? I feel safe when I am with you and I don't feel completely safe when you aren't there. It plays upon my feelings of insecurity."

"Babe." He smoothed my hair away from my face and sat quietly as I absorbed his peace like a sponge sucks up water.

"I'm sure it will be better when Amelia is living with us and I have some company. I mean, I know Rex is good, but he isn't too much help in keeping people safe. As much as I call him my attack hamster, he isn't much use and his attacks aren't particularly intimidating."

Ranger smiled. "What brought on those feelings of insecurity?"

"Amelia and I were talking a little about her nightmares. I told her some of my history and she shared a little of hers. Not much, since she still doesn't totally trust us yet, but she shared a little. She is planning on letting Tank teach her self-defense in the new year. I told her that he'd be a good teacher. She's attracted to him, but she's a little nervous about getting together with him. She feels weak and unworthy because of her nightmares."

"With support she'll learn that we all have nightmares. I doubt that there is anyone on the Operations staff who doesn't. She definitely is not alone."


	13. Chapter 13

"I don't have time to go maternity wear shopping with you today", said Ranger the next morning as I sipped my banana smoothie. "Did you want to go yourself or do you want to wait?"

"I'd rather go", I said. "If I could get a couple of things, in particular something to wear to the Christmas dinner at my parents', that would be wonderful. My wardrobe selection is looking pretty sad."

Ranger smiled. "I will have time later next week. I'm just jammed right now with Tank gone."

"It's okay. I need to see Mrs. Bestler and Mr. Wolenski and Dillon anyway." Mrs. Bestler was a kind old lady who was often bored. She filled her time by playing elevator operator in my old apartment building. She had a good feel as to what was going on in the apartment building at any time of the day, and was often one of the first people to tell me whenever there was a problem. Mr. Wolenski was also a senior. He liked to sit in the lobby and greet people as they entered the building. He kept tabs on the visitors to my apartment and could tell you, down to the tiniest detail, the physical description of every person who crossed the doors looking for my place. Dillon was the building's super. He was remarkably easy-going about all the bloodstains, fire-bombings, break-ins and random acts of vandalism that occurred in the building because it was my official address. Even now that I had moved out, because it was my official address things kept happening there. A firebombing was the last thing that happened, and that happened two months before. I had moved out a month before that.

I went first to the maternity wear store. It was luckily located in a strip mall rather than the indoor mall, and there was parking. I hated playing the parking game during the Christmas season. While it was supposed to be a season of good cheer and goodwill to all men, that concept seemed to disappear with people when they had to go to the mall. It started with parking in the lot. People followed shoppers as they left the mall like the worst kind of stalker and, as they waited with their blinker on for the spot, the spot was often stolen by another driver. I know. I had been the parking thief several times in the past. Then, after finding a parking spot, you had to brave the hordes of people in the mall all fighting for the last item on their list. Staff were run off their feet and grumpy because of it; shoppers were run off their feet and also grumpy because of it. All around, it wasn't a fun time. Although there was a maternity wear store in the mall, I decided to avoid the stress of shopping there and go to the store in the strip plaza.

So when I found parking right away and outside the store that I was going to? It seemed like fate, and I was relieved that I had made the right decision.

I walked into the store and was surprised at how large it was. They had a wide selection of clothes all on a store-wide bogo fifty-percent off sale, and I thought again how happy I was to have decided not to brave the mall.

I started flipping through items and before long had a wide selection that I wanted to try on. I thought it was good that I now had a job that paid well. I had the money to go shopping, and my credit card wouldn't even squeal in displeasure. I always hated it in the past when I heard a drum roll as I was opening the statement.

When my arms were full of clothing, I went into the cubicle and saw a couple of pillows that would let me simulate a pregnant body while I was trying on clothes. They were incredibly helpful, even if I decided that I didn't like the look of my upcoming pregnant stomach. I could only hope that I carried the baby close to my body and didn't grow as fat as the pillows predicted.

I pushed through the pain of bending over and tried on a number of clothes – including black ones – and selected a pair of yoga pants, a pair of jeans, and a pair of black skinny dress pants. I also picked one cream woolen cape-like coat to wear as a winter jacket, two skirts, three dresses – one for summer and two for winter – two pullovers, two cardigans, one blazer, five t-shirts, two nighties, and seven pairs of underwear and three nursing bras. The bras were even pretty, and I was glad that I didn't have to wear something utilitarian in looks. The piece, however, that I was the happiest about was an ivory dress made out of a gauzy material with sparkly detail at the high waist. It had a gathered bodice in a v-neck and long sleeves and I thought it would be perfect for my wedding dress. It was formal enough to go with Ranger's tux, and with its tea-length high-low skirt I thought it was wedding-ish enough that it would look appropriate. I didn't want to wear a formal wedding gown. I had already worn one once in my life and the results didn't turn out so well. This dress solved the need to wear something that looked like a wedding dress but wasn't a formal wedding dress. And I didn't even have to brave the bridal salon, so it was all good.

Even better, the dress was on clearance. I was thrilled with my purchase and thought, after I visited with the people in my old apartment building, I would have to go to my parents' house to show my mother and grandmother.

A salesperson tucked a couple of free pairs of nylons and a pair of black tights into my bag and smiled when I thanked her. "I know from my own pregnancy that the tights are worth their weight in gold. They let you wear skirts but don't require you to shave your legs." I laughed. I could totally relate with my inability to bend over easily and not have to throw up.

The saleswoman helped me carry all the clothes to the car, and I bundled them into the backseat. As I said goodbye to her, I got in the car and drove to my old apartment. It was located just ten minutes from Rangeman, and I was at the building by four in the afternoon. I thought it was the perfect time. Residents would be home from their Christmas preparations but would not yet be eating dinner. That was always a concern with seniors since they ate dinner so early. I had found in the past that getting a seat at all the cheap diners between the hours of four-thirty and five-thirty was just about impossible. Some people called that the happy hour. I called it the senior's hour.

I thought I would have a short visit with each of the three residents and give them the Christmas presents that I had wrapped for them before heading to my parents' for a brief visit, and then home to do some research for Morelli. I hadn't forgotten my promise to look into Arlen's history more intently. I was still hoping to find evidence that he had been involved in other heists. I'd had Dirk look into the lispy man's the day before.

I walked into the building. I was in luck. Mr. Wolenski was sitting in his usual spot on the bench in the lobby. "How are you, Mr. Wolenski?" I said. I bent over and kissed his cheek.

"Stephanie! It's great to see you."

"It's good seeing you as well. How have things been going?"

"Okay. Can't complain. No one would listen anyway."

I smiled.

"Things have been mighty quiet since you left. We only have had the one firebombing in the last three months. When you lived here, things happened much more regularly. It was more fun. How is your new man?"

"He's good. I'm pregnant."

"You are? That's wonderful. I guess this means that you won't be coming back to live here any time soon."

"No, I'm pretty happy."

"Pity." He stopped and looked at me. "Not that you are happy, but that you aren't moving back. Are you still keeping the apartment?"

"Yes. We are keeping it as a safe house. It worked well when we were protecting Dickie."

"Do you know what happened to him?"

"He was arrested and he's too scared of the bookie he owed money to for him to want to get out on bail. We are quite happy about that."

Mr. Wolenski laughed. "Did you always plan to have him arrested?"

I smiled. "Absolutely", I said. "We knew the FBI was looking for him from the beginning. The bookie's thugs looking for him was a surprise, but it worked out in our favor. We lost a few cars in the process, but it all ended well."

'You didn't lose another car, did you?" said Mr. Wolenski. He laughed. My loss of cars was legendary. I didn't know why, but for some reason cars and me didn't mix. In the past, they had been fire-bombed, spray painted, tires knifed, rigged with explosives, keyed and had threatening and creepy messages left inside. I'd even had a couple of cars compacted, although one of those didn't count since Ranger stole my car and had it compacted before I could complain. I wasn't exactly sure why. I mean, it was still mostly drivable. Sure, it wasn't reliable and often required me to talk to God to get the thing to work, it had been in a number of accidents and the seats were a little blackened from a car fire, but it was fine. It wasn't much different than many of the cars that I had driven in the past. After all, I'd had too many car problems to qualify for comprehensive insurance. That meant that, when my car needed to be replaced, the insurance company wouldn't pony up any money. Since needing a new car happened at least once every two months, the quality of my car was dependent upon the amount of money in my bank account. Often, my bank account was sadly lacking. I spent several thousand dollars a year on vehicles even so, and I had driven some questionable cars in the past.

Ranger periodically felt sorry for me and the general unreliability of my cars. When my need for a car interceded with Ranger's pity, he would lend me a fleet car. It was only recently that I found out that Ranger leased a car specifically for me, and that was why there was always a fleet car available for my use.

Since getting together with Ranger – and having had another car blow up – Ranger had convinced me to just drive the fleet car. He said it was a corporate perk. When the baby was born he was planning on leasing a family car for the two of us to drive when we had the baby in tow, and letting me use the fleet car when I was picking up a skip.

"What are you driving now?"

"A Ford Explorer. It's a good car. I've been driving it for a good two and a half months."

"That must be a new record for you." I laughed. "I'm glad you are driving a decent car. I always used to worry when you were driving whatever wreck you had at the time. I always watched for you to come home at night. What happened to that powder blue car you had? Now that was a car."

"Big Blue? That's my grandmother's car. She inherited it, but doesn't have her driver's license. We keep it at my parents' for car emergencies. I have to admit, I used it far more than anyone else. No one else in my family seems to have the 'car disaster' gene. Or, at least, no one has since my grandmother lost her license. She had as many car accidents as I had, but whereas my accidents were all the result of someone else doing something to me, my grandmother's were all because of something she did to others."

For some reason, Big Blue was indestructible. It was almost seventy years old, and the most it had ever gotten was a slight scratch in its chrome bumper. I would drive it periodically, mostly when I felt guilty for demolishing one of Ranger's cars, but it was hard to remain stealthy in the vehicle. It was twice the size of any other car on the road, cornered like a tank, drove like a mattress, and made parking a nightmare. However, since it was every man's wet dream, I periodically got skips cooperating and coming with me just for the ability to say that he had been for a ride in Big Blue. It especially worked well for getting seniors to cooperate. When I drove them to the precinct, they would tell me about the time they had a car just like it.

"I'm glad to find you here." I handed Mr. Wolenski a wrapped box. "I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas."

"Aww, you shouldn't have", said Mr. Wolenski. He smiled as he jiggled the present.

"It's not much, but I wanted to let you know that I was thinking of you. What are you doing for Christmas?"

"I'm going to my son's. The whole family will be there, so it should be fun", he said. "I'm taking Bertha. She didn't have anywhere to go with her family all being on the other side of the country."

"Mrs. Bestler?"

"Yes. My son is one of those people who thinks that the more is merrier and they didn't mind at all that I was bringing a friend."

"That's fabulous."

"Who else have you come to see?"

"Dillon and Mrs. Bestler."

"I'll let you get to it. I think Bertha is riding the elevator again."

I kissed him on his cheek again and wished him a Merry Christmas, and left for the elevator.

Mr. Wolenski was wrong and Mrs. Bestler wasn't riding the elevator. I knocked on her door and she answered quickly. I gave her a hug and handed her the present. "I don't have anything for you", she said.

"That's okay, Mrs. Bestler. I didn't give you much. Just a little something to let you know that I was thinking of you."

"That's nice. You didn't have to do that."

I smiled. "I wanted to. Mr. Wolenski said that you were accompanying him to his son's for Christmas."

"Yes, I am. I am quite looking forward to it."

"You should have a nice time. I met his son once. He seemed like a good guy. Very personable."

"I met him once as well. I liked him almost as much as I like Harry."

"Mr. Wolenski is a lovely person."

Mrs. Bestler smiled and blushed. "Yes, he is. He helped me get a Christmas tree this year. It's not much, but it is a tree. We bought it at the grocery store and then we went to the dollar store and bought little decorations." She led me into her apartment so that I could see the tree from her foyer. It was about a foot tall and had tiny decorations on it. "I was thinking I'd make tiny cranes out of origami, but my fingers don't work as well as they used to."

"I imagine that would make it hard. The cranes would have to be so tiny for the tree that you'd have to be very nimble in your fingers. I don't know personally whether I could do it."

Mrs. Bestler smiled. "That was my problem. My arthritis just wouldn't let me. That's why Harry helped me buy decorations."

"That was a good idea."

"How are things going for you?" She put the present under her tree, and I noticed that it was the only present she had. I was very thankful that I had bought her something.

"They are going wonderfully well. I'm three months pregnant."

Mrs. Bestler beamed. "That's wonderful, dear. Who is the father?"

"Remember the tall Latino man that often came and visited me here? He is the person that I have settled down with."

"I wasn't sure if it was him, or the tall Italian man, or the exceedingly tall black man that you were here with last time." Tank had accompanied me when my apartment had been fire-bombed a couple of months before. Ranger had been out of town.

"Tank – the big black man – is just a good friend, and Morelli – the Italian man – is my former boyfriend and is now just a good friend as well. Ranger is the person who is the father of my baby, and he has moved from being a good friend to being my partner. He's the man that I am living with."

"Are you planning on keeping your apartment? After all, if you have a baby on the way you will probably not be returning."

"That's true, but we are keeping the apartment as a safe house. My partner is a security specialist and periodically needs to put a client into witness protection. He has a couple of houses that he uses for that, and he now has added my apartment to his arsenal. It works out well. Rent is cheap and with the neighborhood watch program in the building, it is a very safe place for people to be protected in."

"Does that mean that the tall man who was here last as a bodyguard might come again?"

I smiled. Mrs. Bestler, not scared at all by Hector's teardrop tattoos, had taken a liking to him. Hector had been very gentle and respectful with her, and Mrs. Bestler had blossomed under the attention. She had been disappointed when Hector had been pulled from Dickie's protection detail.

"You never know what will happen", I said.

Mrs. Bestler smiled.

"I need to see if Dillon is in", I said. "I wanted to pop in to wish him a Merry Christmas."

"Then I'll let you go. I hope you have a great Christmas."

I gave her a hug. "You too", I said.

I left the apartment and took the elevator down to the basement. The hallway to Dillon's apartment always smelled like fabric softener, but although it smelled good I personally thought of trolls when I walked the dark hallway to Dillon's apartment. The lack of light would get to me, but Dillon thought that it was very comforting. I personally didn't know how he did it, but then I was the person that Ranger added skylights to the apartment design just to satisfy my love of natural light. I just thought there was something magical about sunlight. I know, anyway, that I felt much better on a sunny day than I did after days of rain.

The other nice thing about the skylights was that, when it did rain, I'd be able to hear the sound of the rain hitting the skylights. While I loved a sunny day, I adored staying in, hunkering down in front of the fireplace and listening to the sound of the rain on the windows.

I walked quickly down the hall past the laundry room just in case the trolls came out to get me as I comforted myself with the knowledge that I had Dillon's Christmas present in a bag to swing around and ward them off with, and I knocked on Dillon's door. Dillon opened it and smiled when he saw me. "Merry Christmas", he said. "It's great to see you. How are you doing?"

"I'm good, thanks. I brought you a present." I handed him a bag with two six-packs of beer. "I just wanted to say how much I have appreciated all your help over the last year."

Dillon indicated to me that I should come in. "Not a problem. It's a lot quieter around here now that you've left."

"That's good, right?"

"I miss the constant challenge", said Dillon. "Beer?"

"Thanks, but I'm pregnant."

"Congratulations! I'm really happy for you."

"Thanks. I'm pretty happy about it as well."

"When is the baby due?"

"July fourth. It will be an independence baby."

Dillon smiled. "You'll have to name the baby Freedom."

I laughed. "I was thinking we could name the baby after one of the states."

"Yeah, but baby New Hampshire doesn't have the same ring as baby Freedom."

I laughed again.

"Are you planning on having more guests stay in your apartment?"

"We don't have any plans for it at the moment, but that could change in the blink of an eye. We appreciate you letting us put the security camera on the door and the fire escape."

"I appreciate you putting it in the lobby. While we haven't had to use it much, it did help with Mr. Broome escaped from his apartment. We were able to find him quickly because we called Rangeman and they were able to identify that he left the building and which way he went. We found him within fifteen minutes of him leaving the building." Mr. Broome was a sweet old man who suffered from Alzheimer's. His wife was his primary caregiver. Finding him would have been important. I was sure that he hadn't been dressed for the weather when he escaped.

"That's good", I said. "I'm glad it is helpful for more than just me."

Dillon smiled.

"I should probably go", I said. "I just wanted to deliver my Christmas present."

Dillon grinned. "I can guarantee they will go to good use."

I smiled, left the apartment, and sighed as I looked at the hallway. I gathered my courage and told myself it would be alright, even without the heavy bag of Dillon's Christmas present to bat off the basement trolls. I hustled down the hall and made it to the stairs, hurriedly climbed them, and emerged into the lobby with a sigh of relief.

"Are you finished your deliveries for the day?" said Mr. Wolenski.

"I am." I smiled at the man. "I'm ready to go home."

"Take care of that baby in there", he said.

I grinned. "That's the plan." I waved to Mr. Wolenski and left the building.


	14. Chapter 14

As I walked to my car, I heard a sound behind me. I turned, and Arlen James was waving a gun around and pointing it at me. I huddled in my motorcycle jacket, glad that I was wearing a bulletproof coat again, and looked at him. "Hi, Arlen. How may I help you?" I looked at the gun again and tripped my watch panic button.

"You killed my wife."

"No, I didn't. Your wife tried to abduct me and held a gun on me, and a police officer shot her. She shot me, and then the police officer shot her again. I don't agree with what the officer did, but it definitely wasn't my fault."

"My children are without a mother this Christmas, and it is all your fault."

"No, it isn't. It was your fault for letting your wife participate in the heist, and it was your wife's fault for taking me hostage and trying to escape. If any one of those things hadn't happened, your wife would still be alive."

"It was supposed to be so easy."

"How can a heist be easy?"

"We had a man on the inside. It was my wife's cousin. He said that he had the keys to the vault, and that he would open the vault for us. He also said that he would disable the silent alarms so that even if staff had hit it, the police wouldn't be called."

"That would explain why the silent alarm didn't work. I just figured that it was so silent that even the police didn't hear it."

"But the police came."

"My team called them. They knew that I was in trouble and they called them."

"How did they know that you were in trouble?"

"They have a sixth sense about things."

My phone rang. "Don't answer it", said Arlen. "Don't even touch your phone. You did the last time, and the rescuers descended upon us like locusts. This time I don't want you to go near your phone."

"What do you want?" I said. I did up my jacket and tried to ignore how tight the jacket was on my belly. I hoped that the extra girth wouldn't put too much of a strain on the zipper.

"I want you to come home and look after my children. I want you to bake cookies with them, and read stories to them, and decorate the house with them."

"You want me to be a mother to them."

"Yes. Their own mother is dead because of you, so I want you to be a replacement mother to them."

"I thought we'd been over this. Your wife is not dead because of me. It is solely because she was somewhere she wasn't supposed to be. You knew that it was a possibility when you took her on the robbery."

"I know, but it was a sure thing. There weren't supposed to be any hiccups, and my wife wanted to go on a heist so badly. She said she was bored at home with the kids."

"I know, but there are always hiccups in life. So what was the plan? You were robbing that bank in particular?"

"The money had already been stolen by my wife's cousin. Terence had moved three duffel bags filled with money to his car. We were handing him the bag to fill and he was planning on handing the bag back, empty so that we would be charged with public mischief at best. He would get the credit for foiling the robbery which was important to him, and we'd share the money after the heist was over."

"I see."

"It would have all gone smoothly if it weren't for you. Of all the bad luck, you had to be in the bank."

"Sometimes life doesn't go your way. Lula and Willy and I were there to cash checks."

"Now my kids are without a mother."

"I understand, and if you kill me you'll be caught and put in jail, and then your kids will be without a father too."

The phone stopped ringing, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Seconds later, it started ringing again, and I could see how on edge Arlen was. He motioned me towards his car with his gun. "Let's go", he said.

I refused to go anywhere with him. I kept coming back to my original assessment of him – he wasn't a killer and I didn't think that he would harm me. He was hurting and panicking, but he wasn't a killer. Unfortunately, people who were panicking and hurting weren't always the most predictable. "Where are we going?"

"To my house. I need you to look after the kids. I need to go out and earn some money."

"I thought your brother-in-law stole the money for you."

"He did, but then he disappeared and now I'm without the money I need to pay my bail the next time, and I'm without a wife, and Christmas is coming and I need to buy presents." He stopped and sobbed. "This Christmas is so fucked up. My babies keep crying for their mommy and I can't bring her home. So I'll do the next best thing. I'll bring you to act as their mommy."

"I hate to tell you, but I'm not mommy material. I don't know the first thing to do with a baby. I don't know how or what to feed a child. I don't know about bedtimes and naptimes. I don't know what shows on the television are suitable for a child to watch, and I don't know what games are suitable for a child to play. I would be a useless babysitter."

"I heard that you were pregnant."

"I don't know if I am any longer. That bullet hit me hard in my abdomen, and it is still up in the air as to whether the baby will survive." That wasn't true, but I could tell how tied Arlen was to his family. I hoped that he would feel sorry for me and let me go if he thought I was losing the baby. "I've been instructed, as much as possible, to avoid stress and keep my feet up."

"What are you doing then, being on your feet?"

"I had forgotten something in my car, and I thought I would get it while I was thinking of it", I said. "Who is looking after your kids now?"

"My mother, but she has told me that she raised her own kids and she doesn't want to raise another family. She has made it clear that my kids are my responsibility."

"Do you think that holding me up and trying to kidnap me is the best way of looking after your children? After all, if you get caught you will be jailed even longer than you would be otherwise. Kidnapping is a whole other charge and is looked at more seriously than an attempted bank robbery gone wrong."

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Ranger's car drive into the lot behind me. A few seconds later and Morelli's car drove in. I breathed a sigh of relief. The cavalry had arrived.

"Arlen, I am sorry that your wife died. It was a tragedy that should have been avoided. The police officer who shot her is up on charges and is being disciplined for his actions. I know that doesn't bring her back, but it hopefully will give you some feelings of vindication. However, compounding that tragedy by kidnapping me isn't going to solve the issue. It's not going to bring her back. It is just making a bad situation worse. Is that what you really want?"

"I just want her back."

"I know. You have always been a family man and you loved your wife deeply. I knew that before and I still know that. However, getting charged with something else and potentially being denied bail will remove you from your children's lives. Your children, through no fault of their own, will lose both their mother and their father and that's a shame. You are a great dad. You'd do anything for your children. I get that. What I don't get is why you are putting your ability to parent at risk by trying to kidnap me."

I could see Cal and Jose walk through the lobby from the front of the building to the back. I figured they must have parked in the street rather than in the parking lot behind me, and I was glad that Ranger had picked two people who hadn't yet been introduced to Arlen. It would help us get through this without bloodshed and, since it was my bloodshed in question, I was glad for any and every advantage that we could get.

Cal and Jose were walking casually and Cal was talking on the phone, but I could see from their eyes that they were alert and focused and anything other than casual. Ranger, from what I could tell, was staying in the car so as to not alert Arlen to his presence. I knew he was on hand though, and I knew I wasn't getting into Arlen's car. Ranger was giving me time to work on the situation myself and I was thankful for that. I still thought that I might be able to talk reason into him.

"So you want me to go and look after your kids. What are you planning on doing while I look after your kids?"

"I was going to finish the Christmas shopping. My wife was almost finished, but she still had a few things to buy. I was planning on finishing her shopping."

"So you just needed a babysitter so that you could go shopping?"

"I was going to retrieve some money at the same time", said Arlen. "I'm a little short of cash now that my brother-in-law has stolen all the money that I needed to support my family."

"What places are you planning on robbing?"

"I have a few. The toy store is a good start, and then Santa's Village I thought would be good. In both cases, I could wear the Santa suit again."

"Are you planning on robbing the place by yourself or are you planning on doing it with other people again?"

"My skeleton crew is me, my brother, my brother-in-law, and two other people. The last time we added my wife, but the five of us are the basis for any heist we do. Today, we will all be wearing Santa suits – except for my brother-in-law. I don't know where that asshole is, so Terence won't be participating. When the robbery is finished, we will all go separate directions so that the mall security guards don't know which way to go to capture us."

"That sounds smart. You are the kind of person that your children need, the kind of person that would be a good father. Why are you taking the chance of messing this up?"

"I just need money so that I can stay out of jail."

"I understand that you want money. You are so smart though that you would do well in a job. Why don't you get a job?"

"I have a criminal record. Do you know how many people hire someone with a criminal record? Let me tell you. None. I want to be a good father."

"I understand that, but trying to kidnap me isn't the way."

"Come on. I need you to look after my kids."

"What happens if you don't come home after you steal the money? After all, your wife was killed in your last heist, and you could be killed just as easily in this one."

"I'm not going to die", he said.

"I'm happy to hear that", I said. "Your kids need you."

"They need you too. My mother said that she was giving me until this evening to sort out this issue with my children's care. She said that, if I didn't pick them up by six, she would advertise them on the online classified site and sell them off to the highest bidder. The thing is that my mother is crazy enough to do it."

"She would get charged for that, and human trafficking is a very serious charge. I suspect that it is an even more serious charge than robbing a bank."

Cal and Jose eased up behind Arlen, and Arlen moved out of their way. Cal and Jose moved with him, and Cal whipped out his gun and dug it into Arlen's ribs. "This is what we're going to do", he said as Jose reached around Arlen and went to grab his gun. But Arlen didn't want his gun to be taken away, and in the struggle to get control of the gun he shot me. Again. I went flying back from the force of the bullet, and I stumbled and slipped on some ice and fell onto my butt on the ground. Arlen, thinking that was a good diversion, took off running, and Jose took off after him. Seconds later, Jose tackled him and cuffed him behind his back.

Cal jumped over to me as I struggled to breathe, and Ranger and Morelli came running up. Ranger crouched down beside me and inspected my coat. He opened the zipper and pulled up the sweater I was wearing to inspect my chest. "Breathe", he said in his hypnotic voice. It was low and reassuring, and it pushed the panic back down again. He rubbed my back slowly. "Deep breaths, babe."

"Is she going to be okay?" asked Morelli.

"She's just had the wind knocked out of her", said Ranger. He turned back to me. "Come on, babe. You can do it."

I opened and closed my mouth like a fish out of water a second or two longer, and when my vision started to gray and black dots appeared, my body worked out the cadence of breathing again and I gasped in a huge breath. "Jesus, I hate that feeling", I said.

Ranger smiled in relief, and Morelli laughed. "You've got to stop scaring me like that", said Morelli. "I missed you getting shot the other day, and I wished that I had missed it today as well."

"Funny enough, I wish the same thing", I said. I concentrated on my breathing and a few seconds later the black spots disappeared. My chest still felt like a sledgehammer had been slammed into my torso, and the pain radiated down into my abdomen and up into my shoulders and across and around my back. "Let me up", I said. "I need to walk this off."

Ranger helped me to my feet. My pants were wet from sitting in the snow, and I was starting to get cold. I walked around in circles for a few minutes as I played with my breathing so that it caused the least amount of pain. I bent over slightly and massaged my chest and abdomen, then walked up to where Arlen was standing. "What the hell were you thinking?" I said. I felt like shrieking at him. He could have hurt me. He wanted to hurt me.

"I thought that I'd be able to get away while the attention was on you", said Arlen. "It was my backup plan."

"So your plan was to kidnap me and, if that didn't work, it was to shoot me?"

"It only seemed fair. An eye for an eye. I don't understand why it didn't work. I shot you point blank."

"I was wearing a bulletproof jacket", I said. "You may not have killed me, but I'm in a lot of pain if that makes you feel any better."

Arlen sighed. "It doesn't, actually."

"That's because you aren't a killer, and shooting me won't bring her back."


	15. Chapter 15

Ranger had me go to the hospital again. "I'm getting tired of this place", I said.

Ranger smiled and played with my fingers. "I'm just glad we have this option close by", he said. "You may be tired of this place, but imaging is necessary to make sure that you and the baby are alright."

"I should be fine. The bullet hit higher up this time."

"It you weren't wearing your bulletproof jacket, it would have pierced your heart."

"My chest feels a little sticky and wet."

"When I checked at the crime scene, the bullet had pierced through the jacket and into your chest, but although there is a puncture wound there it isn't fatal. That's why I bandaged it at the scene."

"I barely remember what you did at the scene. I was a little out of it and just trying to deal with the pain."

"I know. Do you remember talking to Arlen?"

"Vaguely."

"He said shooting you was a backup plan."

"So now he has taken an attempted bank robbery and added attempted murder."

"That's right. Do you remember Morelli asking you whether you would still look into his background? He's out for blood and wants to ensure that Arlen doesn't get out of jail for a long time."

"I understand that. I feel bad for his kids though. Arlen may have been a misguided person, but he was a good father."

"He didn't provide a good example to his kids."

"No, but he loved them deeply and cared for them well. He adored his wife. The situation might have been of his own making, but he still is in a bad situation."

"I don't have sympathy for him. I often am reminded of something my uncle used to tell me. You can choose your actions but you can't choose the consequences. His action was to try to rob a bank. The consequence was his wife getting killed. His action was to try to kill you. The consequence was that he was arrested. He may not like the consequences, but they are the consequences to his actions."

"That's true."

"How does your chest feel now?"

"Honestly? Like every bone in my chest has been broken. It hurts to breathe, it hurts to move, it even hurts to sit here and do nothing. My abdomen still hurts from the other day. Now the pain has radiated up and I'm in agony from my shoulders down to my hips."

"You know I'm going to want you to take it easy for the next little while, don't you?"

"I figured that. I will, however, be able to do the computer work on Arlen, won't I? I sit on the sofa with my feet up, but I want to do that computer work so that we can get him on all the charges we can. It will take me a long time to do the research."

"I'm sure it will. Let's see what the obstetrician says before we decide as to whether you should be lying down for a few days or whether it would be okay for you to sit up."

"Fair enough", I said. I crossed my fingers that the doctor approved me sitting up. I needed to do something that diverted me from the pain that I was in.

The doctor came in and Ranger detailed the situation that I had been in and the trauma that I had undergone. The doctor checked the puncture site and said that she needed to stitch it up. "I think it will only take one or two stitches", she said, "but I think it will help the healing process. After I stitch this up, I'd like to send you for imaging to be done and, when that is complete, I'll review the imaging results with you and send the imaging to the obstetrician on-call to see what he or she has to say about the results. Don't worry. You're in the right place."

"Can I get some painkillers?"

"I'd prefer for you to have nothing stronger than over-the-counter pain relievers. Are you in a lot of pain?"

"Yes", I said.

"Okay, we'll get those pain relievers into you right away."

"Thank you."

The doctor left the cubicle and Ranger looked at me with a concerned look in his eyes. "I know that you are in agony when you ask for painkillers", he said. "You never want to take painkillers. Even when your leg was shot you didn't want to take painkillers."

"They make me sleepy."

"And you're not worried about being sleepy now?"

"No. The idea of sleeping through some of this is a very attractive idea."

"Babe", said Ranger in commiseration. After a few minutes of silence and as tears hovered on my lashes, Ranger took pity on me and tried to give me something to focus on. "Tell me about the clothes that you bought", he said.

"I bought a small wardrobe. I bought three pairs of pants, two skirts, three dresses, some sweaters and some t-shirts. I also bought a winter coat that is more like a cape with sleeves, some underwear and maternity tights, and my wedding dress."

"You bought a wedding dress? Do I get to see it?"

"I haven't decided yet. I was planning on taking it to my parents' this afternoon after I finished my visiting at the apartment building and leaving it there and deciding later. Did you want to see it?"

Ranger thought about that for a moment. "I don't think so, although I'd like you to describe it to me."

"It's about mid-calf length, and it's an off-white color." I described the dress in detail. I wasn't sure if Ranger was really listening or even really cared, but he pretended to and let me talk. It was working to divert my mind, so I was happy to describe the dress down to every last detail.

"Are you planning on wearing a veil?" he said.

I guess he was listening after all.

"No", I said. "I was just thinking of having flowers in my hair instead. The dress doesn't really go with a veil and to tell you the truth, neither does our wedding. I like the informality of our wedding. It will be laid back and will just focus on the meaning of the ceremony. It will celebrate the wedding with only those people who are the most important to us. I don't want a big, fancy wedding. I had that the first time around, and I hated it. I was talked into doing all these traditional 'must-haves' and the wedding grew so large and unnecessarily full of drama that I regularly prayed that I would wake up and it would all be over with. I thought being married would make it all worth it, but it didn't. The wedding as we planned ours to be is much more 'me' than the one I had before. Are you happy with the wedding as we have planned it?"

"I am. I didn't have a big wedding the first time around, but the vows didn't have a lot of meaning for me either. We were getting married because of Julie and benefits, and we both knew it. This time the vows mean something to me. Having a million people witness it won't make it more meaningful to me but instead will make it less. I'm glad that we kept our guest list small and I'm glad that we aren't having the whole ball gown, band playing, large wedding party-sort of celebration. I'm glad that we are doing it the way that we are. It will be far more meaningful to me than having a spectacle."

"I'm sure your parents will come up with something good."

"We should pick out flowers for the restaurant soon. I seem to remember that you wanted a lot of flowers." A couple of weeks before I'd had a dream about our wedding. Like we had planned, my dream had the wedding at Ranger's parents' restaurant. In the dream, Ranger's parents had put tiny string lights along the beams in the restaurant and we were getting married beside the fireplace. There were flowers everywhere. On the tables, near the fireplace, in my hair, and I was carrying a bouquet. Julie was my only attendant, and when the vows were being said, Julie held my bouquet for me. Ranger was wearing his tux because, like a real-life James Bond, Ranger owned his own tux. He said it was because the rentals never fit him properly. Personally, I thought it was hot. I had only seen him in it a couple of times, but each time was panty-dropping drool-worthy.

But then, Ranger in anything was panty-dropping drool-worthy, and Ranger in nothing transcended description.

Ranger, upon hearing my dream and how beautiful I thought it was, immediately started putting the pieces in place to bring that dream to life. He had called his parents, and they were running the electrical outlets to add string lights to the beams. They thought it would be a nice touch normally as well, so they were happy to go to the expense of adding the lights.

Ranger and I felt very strongly that we should pay for the wedding. Our parents paid for us to get married the first time around, and we thought that we should pay for it the second time. Ranger's parents weren't very happy with that, so we compromised and let them donate the space as long as we could pay for the food and beverages.

In keeping with my dream, I was looking for large silver chargers to put under the plates at the table. Ranger's mom had been helping me look for ones that were reasonably priced, and that morning Ranger's mom had sent me a message saying that she found some that were on sale at a supplier that they used frequently. The plates were a shiny metal that looked like silver but would be able to go through the dishwasher. That was important since Ranger and I planned on donating them to the restaurant after the wedding.

"What color of flowers do you want?" asked Ranger as he again obviously tried to divert my attention.

"I don't know. I'm a little flexible. We'll have to look up flower meanings and look on Pinterest for some ideas."

The doctor came back to the cubicle and carried a suture kit. She numbed the area and disappeared for a few minutes to let the freezing work its magic.

"That's a good idea", said Ranger. "Perhaps, over the next few days, we can look at bouquets and come up with some suggestions for the florist."

"All I know is that I just want you having a boutonniare and just me having a bouquet, and I want the bouquet to be simple and small rather than large and complex."

"We can do that."

"I'd like the wedding bouquet to be made of the same flowers as will be on the table in the centerpieces."

"We can do that too." I shut my eyes. "How are you doing there, babe?"

"I'm tired of being in pain."

"I understand."

"Talk to me?"

"What do you want me to talk about?"

"Anything."

"What do you want to name the baby if it is a boy?"

"I was thinking Lucas after your mother's name of Lucia, if it is a boy. Besides, it is my father's middle name and I have always liked it. And if it is a girl, I was thinking Tia after your aunt. Your Aunt Tia and Uncle Alejandro have played an important part in your life, and I'd like to name the baby after them."

Ranger kissed my hand. "That would mean a lot to me."

"If the baby is a girl, I was wondering about Tia Rose, after your aunt and your grandmother."

"Don't you want to name the baby after your grandmother?"

"Grandma is a pretty hip lady, but I don't want a baby to be named Edna. Love the person, hate the name. I wouldn't do that to our baby. But I thought Tia Rose would be a good name, and it would also honor your sister Rosa. I like it. It's pretty."

"I like it as well, and my family would be honored to hear that you picked the name out of respect for them. What do you want the baby's middle name to be if the baby is a boy?"

"I don't know." I paused. "What about Lucas Alejandro?"

"Sounds good to me."

The doctor came in again and touched the edges of the wound. When I couldn't feel it, she quickly stitched up the hole, cleaned up, put a bandage on it, and gave us a requisition form to go to the imaging department. "Do you know how to get there?" she said.

I groaned. "Only too well", I said.

Ranger thought about smiling, and he helped me off the examination bed, found a wheelchair, and pushed me to the imaging department. We didn't have to wait long, and soon were seeing pictures of our baby on the screen. The technician took a multitude of pictures, before sending me to get an MRI done. As we waited, I said, "do you think that everything is okay with the baby?" I swallowed hard. "The last few times, the technician talked to us about the baby and what we were seeing. This time the technician was quiet."

"Maybe she had a headache. Or maybe she was having a bad day. You don't know the reason she was quiet, so don't worry about it. If the baby isn't okay, we'll deal with it then. In the meantime, however, we have no proven reason for us to worry."

I looked down at the ground. "I just worry, you know?"

Ranger took my hand and smoothed the skin on my palm before lifting it and kissing it. "I know", he said. "You worry because you care, and there is nothing wrong with caring."

Tears came to my eyes, and he tenderly swiped them away with his thumb. He kissed me gently.

"You know what I wish?" I said.

"What's that?"

"I wish that we had gotten my new clothes out of my car before I abandoned the car in the parking lot."

"Cal has taken the car back to Rangeman. We can pick up the new clothes when we return to the apartment."

"How was Cal able to drive it? I have the key."

Ranger just looked at me. "Babe", he said.


	16. Chapter 16

_I guess the fan fiction site is under maintenance again, as I cannot respond to reviews. I know that in about a day I'll be able to, so please don't mind it when I don't respond. I'll keep trying, but in the meantime, here's another chapter..._

The doctor walked back into the cubicle. "Here's what we know", she said. "Your baby, at this point, looks just fine. I have consulted with the obstetrician on call, and he agrees with me that you should rest for the next few days as much as you can, but there aren't any special instructions for you to follow to help protect your baby. What I would recommend for the health of your baby is to have some quiet days and keep your feet up." I breathed a sigh of relief and looked at Ranger with a smile on my face. The tightness in his eyes didn't disappear, however. I guessed that he was still waiting for the verdict on me. I wanted to tell him that it didn't matter what the verdict was. The baby was okay, and that's what mattered.

"What is more worrisome is the injury to your chest", said the doctor. "You have two broken ribs and some internal bleeding. The bleeding is slow and, to all intents and purposes, I think it has stopped. The bleeding is, however, one of the reasons your breath is so short."

"I thought it was just because it hurt so damn much to breathe."

The doctor smiled. "I'm sure that isn't helping. I'd like you to hang out in Emergency for a while so that we can pump some saline into you and put you on oxygen. In a bit we'll do another MRI to compare the images and to ensure that your body has truly stopped bleeding."

"What will be the treatment if the internal bleeding has stopped?" said Ranger.

"Rest. Lots of rest will be important as the body reabsorbs the blood."

"And if the internal bleeding doesn't stop on its own?"

"Then we'll have to look at surgery as an option. Because of the baby, that is an option that I don't want to take unless there is truly no other option."

"Okay."

The doctor turned back to me. "It's going to be awhile, so you might as well lie back and take a nap, if you can. I'll be back in a bit."

Ranger helped me lie down as the doctor left the room. A nurse came in shortly afterwards to affix the blood pressure cuff and insert the IV for the saline drip. She looked at me, and my teeth were chattering. "I'll get you some warmed blankets", she said. She left the room and returned a few minutes later with her arms full of heated blankets. Ranger spread them over me and I smiled in relief.

"I was lying in the snow outside after I was shot", I said. "My pants are wet."

"Hopefully this will warm you up", said the nurse. "Perhaps it would be a good idea to take your wet pants off."

"I'll do that", said Ranger. He jumped up and pulled the blankets up, took off my boots, and pulled my pants down. He re-spread the blankets over me as the nurse finished putting in the IV and attaching the various pieces to monitor me effectively. She straightened as Ranger pulled his chair over closer to the side of the bed and captured my hand in his.

"Try to get some sleep", said the nurse. She left the room.

It was a testament to how bad I felt that I didn't even mind the fact that she had licked her lips when she looked at Ranger, and that she had the annoying tendency to play with her hair when she was talking to him. Normally that would have me baring my teeth and sharpening my claws. This time I hardly noticed.

Okay, I did notice. But I took solace in the fact that Ranger obviously didn't.

"Don't worry", said Ranger. He lifted my hand and kissed my palm again. "You're going to be fine." I looked at him, and he looked anxious.

I pulled his hand up and kissed it. "I know", I said. I looked at him and smiled.

"What is it, babe?"

"I thought 'for better or worse, in sickness and in health' came after the wedding, not before."

Ranger smiled before sobering and shaking his head. "I don't understand what Arlen was thinking."

"I don't think he was thinking at all", I said. "I think he was simply reacting to what was in front of him. I keep coming back to my original research that I did on him. He's not a killer. I have taken in a number of murderers, and they all have a certain something that lets you predict that they are murderers. Sure, there have been some serial killers that we have caught together that didn't have any indication in their behavior that they were as dangerous as they were. But generally there is something in their eye that tells you that they were dangerous and you should be very careful around them. In most cases, it is seeing the anger well up and overflow that is your indication."

"Murderers come in all sizes, babe. Not all murderers have an anger management problem. Not all murderers seem dangerous and, I have found, the most dangerous criminals are the ones that don't appear to be so."

"I guess I can see your point."

"I'll ask Cal to rescue a pair of pants and bring them to the hospital for you to wear home."

"It will be nice to be in maternity wear. My yoga pants don't stretch any more, and I keep being afraid that the spandex in the fabric will give way and my tummy will tear through the fabric like Hulk ripping through his clothes." I smiled. "It kind of reminds me of what Lula looks like in most of her outfits."

"I don't know what she is thinking when she buys clothes", said Ranger. "It doesn't even look comfortable to me."

"I know from experience that camel toe is not the most comfortable way to wear pants, and Lula's pants are so tight that camel toe is the norm."

"Maybe that's why she wears skirts so much?"

"I doubt it", I said. "She typically wears thongs when she wears skirts, and since she buys the thongs too small as well, she has bits hanging out from the edge of her underwear that shouldn't be hanging out. I know. When we've been chasing a skip there have been times when her skirt has come up and I've been given a view of the full Monty. It's not a pretty sight."

Ranger looked fascinated. "Perhaps she enjoys the rubbing? I would imagine it would be like constantly having oral sex and would keep you just on the verge for hours."

"That doesn't sound very comfortable to me", I said. "I don't have the patience to wait that long."

Ranger thought about smiling. "I know."

I chuckled and pulled the blankets up higher. Ranger brought my hand to his mouth again and gave me another kiss. "Go to sleep, babe. I'm sure you're tired."

"What will you do? You'll be bored."

"I can do some work on my phone", he said. "Don't worry about me." He kissed my hand again and then put it flat on the blankets. "I'll phone your mother while we wait as well."

I smiled sleepily. "You're my hero."

"For calling your mother?"

"You're definitely taking one for the team."

Ranger's lip quirked up. "As you said, for better or worse…"

I chuckled again and closed my eyes and floated on a sea of pain, not really aware of what was going on around me or the passage of time, yet not really asleep either. Sometime later, Morelli badged his way into Emergency. He entered the cubicle and I could hear him talking quietly to Ranger. I pried my eyes open. "Hey, cupcake", he said.

"Hey."

"How are you?"

"I've been better. The last time I was shot wasn't this bad. I think it was because this time I was almost on top of the gun when it went off, whereas last time the gun was a few feet away."

"Perhaps. Ranger said that you have internal bleeding?"

I looked at him and saw the steam pouring out of his ears. He was angry and trying not to show it, and was trying to be supportive and gentle with me. I appreciated the effort, especially because I knew what a struggle it was for him.

"I do. The doctor said that was why I was struggling to breathe. They're giving me oxygen to help me out."

"Ranger said that you also have two broken ribs?"

"I do. Apparently that is the other reason that I am struggling to breathe. Between getting shot today and getting shot the other day, I'm just a very unhappy camper right now. I'm in pain and because of the pregnancy I'm unable to take any good painkillers. The acetaminophen has been barely touching it."

"I have booked Arlen and arrested him for attempted murder."

"He wanted me to take care of his kids. His mother was taking care of them this afternoon but she had told him that she had already parented her own kids and she wasn't willing to parent more."

"To each their own, I guess. If it was my family or your family, they would be there to help, no matter what. I think that's what family is supposed to be like."

"It certainly was so foreign to the way that any family I know operates that it shocked me when he said it." I whimpered slightly and then got mad at myself for making a noise.

I glanced up at Morelli, and he looked upset and worried. I looked over at Ranger, and he looked the same as Morelli. I shook my head and smiled. "I'm not dying, guys. I'm going to be okay."

Morelli pulled over another chair and sat on the other side of me. "Tell me what happened", he said. I think he was trying to divert his mind. He looked like he was about to cry, and his voice was husky like he was holding back tears.

So I led him through everything from when I arrived at the apartment building. I told him about Mr. Wolenski and Mrs. Bestler spending Christmas together, and how I thought a romance may be blooming between the two of them. Morelli smiled at that. So did Ranger. I told them about Mr. Broome escaping the apartment building and how Rangeman had been able to divert a disaster from occurring. Ranger smiled at that one as well. I told them about braving the basement to give Dillon his beer. Morelli laughed. He knew how much I hated the basement. Ranger thought about smiling. Then I told them about going outside and heading to my car when Arlen approached me. I told them that he had wanted me to look after his kids so that he could steal some money from the toy store and Santa's Village. "He also said that there was an inside man at the bank." I told them about the panic button being disabled and how the heist was supposed to have occurred. I told them that Arlen's wife had been bored at home and he took her on that heist because it was supposed to have been a sure thing and totally safe. "Her brother was the contact at the bank. He has now disappeared with the money. Arlen just didn't count on us being in the neighborhood."

"Let's talk about the brother-in-law." He asked me questions and led me through everything I could think of that Arlen had told me. By the time I was finished I could tell that he was no longer panicking or upset about the state that I was in. Instead, he was thinking about the case.

"It's Saturday. I won't be able to get Arlen in front of a judge for a bail hearing until Monday", said Morelli.

"I'll text Vinnie and let him know that he shouldn't bond Arlen out again", said Ranger. He picked up his phone and quickly typed in his message and hit send.

"I'll talk to the DA to see if we can offer him a deal", said Morelli. "I want Arlen, and I'm still hoping that you'll be able to investigate him at some point before the new year, but I also want the brother-in-law and, to be honest, we can't charge Arlen with theft since he wasn't the person who did the robbery. Terence was the one responsible and I'm glad that Arlen told you that. We didn't know how the money had disappeared. We talked to the brother-in-law, and he said there were two getaway cars. He said that one thief took the bags and left, but the video from the surveillance cameras didn't support that. I'm still charging Arlen with attempted murder, and I have a restraining order here for you to sign. The problem is that, if we have a bleeding-heart jury, he might get a reduced sentence. The more that we can charge him with, the better the chances that we are able to put him in jail for a long time. I want to be able to show that he has a history of crime and that it escalates when he is upset.

"In particular, I am looking for any traces that we have of other crimes that he has committed and, in particular, any crimes that were violent. I'd like to be able to hang him for what he has done."

"Are you planning on talking to the doctor on duty tonight?" said Ranger.

"That's my next stop", said Morelli with a fleeting smile.


	17. Chapter 17

I had another floaty-nap while we waited for our next stop at the MRI machine. I had finally warmed up, thankfully. Cal had brought me the pair of yoga pants. He said that he thought I'd prefer something comfortable rather than something more structured and stiff like jeans, and I thanked him fervently. The only thing I would have liked better was a pair of Ranger's sweatpants, but since they were too long on me and too wide on the waist, they weren't something suitable to wear out of the hospital. When I got home, however, I was definitely switching.

Cal had also brought me one of the cardigans and a clean t-shirt. The t-shirt was white with a boat-neck and the sweater was a nice pearl gray, and I thought that I would be happy to change into some clean clothes. I had been changed into a gown when I came in the hospital, but I remembered that my sweater had a hole and a number of bloodstains on it. I thought it made the most sense to just throw the sweater out, which I was a little peeved about. I had liked that sweater. When I mentioned that to Ranger, he frowned and told me that he'd buy me a new one. He was missing the point though. I didn't want a new one. I wanted that one, sans bullet hole and bloodstains. I wanted the crime to have never been committed. My eyes welled with tears and Ranger looked tortured. He wiped the tears from my lashes. "Don't cry, babe. It's no problem. I can buy you a new one whenever you want."

"You don't understand. It was my favorite."

"I can buy you new favorites."

"It was soft."

"I can buy you other soft ones, babe. There is no point getting upset about it."

I shuddered in a breath. "I don't want to cry. It hurts too much."

"I know." He paused. "Do you want to sleep some more?"

"No. I want to talk to you and have something else to think about."

"Okay." He paused as he thought for a minute. "How do you think Dirk is settling in?"

"He's a good addition to the team. He doesn't mind the boring files, he is able to quickly navigate corporate spreadsheets, and he has been learning fast in how to use the In-Spect software so that he can get the most out of it. I have set up a template for captures and have Miguel and Dirk testing it to see if meets our needs. We'll test it for another month or so before we finalize it. Dirk is learning fast and will soon outstrip me and my abilities."

Ranger smiled. "I doubt that. You are the best researcher I have ever encountered. I would be thrilled if Dirk were half the researcher that you are."

"I'm telling you – at some point, you'll wish that you had offered the Manager's job to Dirk rather than me."

"Dirk is a good guy and he's learning fast, but he doesn't know the ins and outs of research and skip chasing. Since he hasn't done any captures of skips, it makes sense that he hasn't developed the instincts he needs to create the capture plans. How do you envision organizing the department when you are back to work full-time?"

"I was thinking that we would do it according to topic. All capture plans I will do. I have a better idea what I am looking for since I have been doing them for so long. All sales requests will be done by Dirk. Those are more often corporations, and Dirk has a good nose for reading into a corporation the health of the company. Similarly, the due diligence research when we are doing for the mutual fund company will be done by Dirk as well. I can do it, but I don't have a great feel for what I am doing. At least, not in the way that Dirk knows what he is looking at. I think that will take up all of Dirk's time. If he has extra time, he can help Miguel and the new person and me do the setup and maintenance of company security systems, and the investigations for the police departments. Just judging by the number of companies that we are signing on and the number of research requests from the TPD and Newark, it will take all of Miguel's and the new person's and my time to keep up."

"Do you think that it would be a good idea to hire another person full-time to help out in the department?"

"Yes. I don't think a half-person will be nearly enough."

"We can do that."

"Is it time for you to hire an assistant?"

"I could, but I don't know what I'd have the assistant do. I've just off-loaded my HR responsibilities, so that takes out those responsibilities that the assistant could have helped me on. I don't have a lot of meetings with staff that I would want minutes taken at, I'm a fast typist and type my own correspondence and reports. Tank handles the Operations administration. I have offered him an assistant in the past as well, and his reaction was the same as mine. We are both control freaks, and we don't want to hand over any of that control. I'd rather add the responsibilities to another person's job, much like we did with the Operations logistics. It was getting too much for Tank to handle with his other responsibilities, so we made it part of Hal's job. He's responsible for keeping track of the keys to the fleet cars and determining who is working where and when. As Manager of the ERTs and Patrols, he needs to be responsible for some administrative work as well as his existing work. That is what he is paid for."

"Did he mind the increase in responsibilities?"

"No. He was happy to help out."

"You have a good staff."

"I like the way we work together. We are a tight team, and I am very happy about that."

The doctor came in to the cubicle. "How are you doing here?" she said.

"I think it is time for another pain reliever", I said.

The doctor looked at the chart. "Yes, you are due. Before we do that though, I'd like to send you for imaging again. I'll send you for another ultrasound so that you can see the baby, and another MRI to judge whether the bleeding has stopped. I'll meet you back here when you are done."

The nurse came up and detached me from the nasal cannula, the pulse oximeter and the blood pressure cuff. She unhooked me from the IV while Ranger retrieved the wheelchair. "Your husband seems really attentive", said the nurse.

I smiled. "He's the best."

"Good ones don't come around often. Enjoy him and make sure he knows you love him."

"I tell him constantly."

"That's good. Hang on tight to each other. I didn't take the time to tell my guy, and then my guy found another woman who was willing to tell him constantly. Now I just miss him."

"I'm sorry", I said.

The nurse smiled sadly. "Unfortunately it happens." She finished detaching me. "You're all set. See you back here in a few."

I waited about a minute before Ranger brought me a wheelchair, and I carefully got off the bed and settled myself in the chair. He wheeled me down to the imaging department, and we went through the process again. He helped me up onto the examination bed, pulled up the hospital gown and waited until the technician had spread the gel around my tummy. "I'm surprised to see you back again."

"I have internal bleeding and the doctor is trying to make sure that the baby isn't affected."

"Okay, we'll do our best to see what is going on." She pressed down on the wand and ran it over my abdomen, and adjusted so that the picture was clear. "That's your baby", she said. "You can see it moving around. It looks less agitated than it did the last time you were in."

"Do you think getting shot affected the baby?"

"Yes, as a transient thing. There is no reason to believe that the baby's development was affected. The doctor still needs to review the pictures to say for sure though."

She let us watch the baby a little longer. Ranger and I held hands and let the peace and joy associated with watching our baby wash over us. After a few minutes, the technician wiped off the ultrasound wand and handed Ranger a tissue so that he could wipe off my tummy. When we finished, he helped me off the bed and settled me in the wheelchair again, quietly thanked the technician, and pushed me to the MRI waiting area.

Several minutes later, we were back in our cubicle waiting for the results. Ranger had lifted me up onto the bed again, and I gratefully climbed under the blankets. While Ranger looked like he was roasting, the pain was making me cold. I was also getting hungry and thirsty. I didn't know how Ranger felt. He had gone just as long without food or something to drink, and I thought he must be starving. I said so, and he smiled. "Do you know what I had to go through for training? Twelve hours without something to eat or drink is nothing."

"The army breeds them tough?"

"Absolutely", said Ranger. He smiled abashedly at me as his stomach rumbled. I laughed.

"Ella put some dinner in our fridge which she said we'd just have to heat up when we got in. She also said she made you a fruit salad for dessert since she thought that would sit better than many of the other desserts you could have, but that she thought that, after getting shot, you would appreciate some dessert."

"I could really go for a fruit salad", I said. My stomach rumbled and I laughed again. "Apparently my stomach agrees with me."

The doctor walked into the cubicle and smiled at us. "You are now cleared to eat as well", she said. "The bleeding has stopped. The bone has been bruised badly in all of your upper ribs and your sternum, but that will just take some time to heal. We don't recommend doing anything special with your fractured ribs. Try to breathe as deeply as you can so that you don't get a chest infection." She went over the warning signs associated with internal bleeding and what I should do to take care of myself. "The good news is that we don't have to operate, so you are now cleared to consume food and liquids. I have consulted with the obstetrician again, and he said the baby still looks healthy and happy, and he sees no need to worry." She patted my foot. "Please don't get shot again. You might not be as lucky a third time."


	18. Chapter 18

Ranger helped me out of my outfit and into a pair of his sweatpants and a sweatshirt of his when we got to the apartment. I sighed with relief as I cuddled into the fabric. I didn't know what soap and fabric softener combination Ella used, but it resulted in clothes that smelled amazing. I didn't know what I liked better – the scent of the Bulgari Green body wash that Ranger used, or the scent of his laundry detergent. Either were reassuring and comforting scents.

Ranger heated up the philly cheese steak casserole that Ella had made, and put it on the table with a tossed salad and our favorite dressings. He dished me up a small helping, and I tucked into the food. It wasn't long until my plate was cleared. "Would you like more?" said Ranger with a smile.

"I would", I said. I winced as I took a deep breath.

Ranger looked at me worriedly as I whimpered, and then served another helping onto my plate. I ate most of that and all of my salad before I decided I was full and I pushed the plates aside.

"I'm not waking you up tomorrow", he said. "I'll let you sleep as long as you would like."

"So if I don't wake up until two?"

"Then you don't wake up until two."

"If I don't wake up until five?"

"Then you don't wake up until five. I don't know how well you'll sleep tonight, and any time you are sleeping you won't be aware of being in pain. It can only do good things for you."

"I want to do that research for Morelli tomorrow."

"Let that wait until Monday", said Ranger. "Take tomorrow to rest."

"I'll see how I feel."

Ranger looked at me and I could see his frustration with my answer. He wanted me to take the day off and to not even think about working. Of course, he'd be happier if I didn't even think about working for the remainder of the week – or even until the bone bruises were healed. Knowing Ranger, he would be glad that the Christmas week was coming so that I was forced to stop working on the research desk.

"Tomorrow, the guys are coming to move the furniture from our existing den to our new den, and Julie's bedroom furniture is arriving at two. If you hear other people in our apartment, don't be worried."

"Thanks for reminding me", I said. "I had forgotten that they were coming."

"I'll bring up the elephant in the room. I called your mother when you were sleeping at the hospital."

"Oh, boy. How did that go? Was it a good thing that I was asleep?"

"Yes, it was. Your mother wanted to come to the hospital and I would have agreed except that your grandmother wanted to come as well, and I thought that would upset you more than it would for them not to come to visit you. I didn't think you'd want your grandmother asking to see your wound."

"That would be one of the tamer things that she could do. One time I was in the hospital and she took off the pulse oximeter and put it on her own finger. The only problem was that she had a bad cough at the time, so the monitor went from my rate which was normal, to nothing, to a low reading. The monitor squealed and the nurse came running. My grandmother didn't understand that she had done something wrong. Through it all, the doctor ended up checking my grandmother's lungs and diagnosed her with pneumonia, my grandmother was put on antibiotics, and my mother was encouraged to take my grandmother home before she caused a problem."

"I'm glad I didn't invite them then."

"There are two main reasons that she isn't in a retirement home. One, of course, is the cost. Retirement homes are incredibly expensive. The other, however, is her desire to trade medications with the other residents. She has never been successful at this, but she likes to try. She said that she is always trying to see what the medications do, and the only way to know what they do is to try them out. She'd be hoping that I was given some narcotics so that she could steal some."

"There is one thing you can say about your grandmother. She is a live wire who will live forever just because she doesn't know how to give up."

I smiled. "I can only hope. I don't like the idea of her dying. I've always been a bit surprised that she hasn't looked into cryogenics as a viable option. It seems like the kind of thing that she'd be interested in."

Ranger thought about that as he cleaned up the kitchen and helped me out of the chair. "I can see why that wouldn't work for her. The 'leave them' part of the 'freeze them and leave them' practice would be hard for Grandma to accept. Do you need help in the bathroom?" he said.

"No, thanks", I said. He smiled. He knew how annoying I found it when he was in the bathroom while I was using it. Sure, I didn't mind him having a shower while I brushed my teeth or washed my face. I didn't mind him shaving while I blow dried my hair. But I didn't like him in the bathroom while I was having a shower unless he was in the shower with me. And I definitely didn't like him in the bathroom while I was on the toilet. I didn't like being in the bathroom while he was on the toilet either. Toileting just seemed like a solo activity to me. Ranger was a lot more open about it than I was. He would be quite comfortable with using the toilet while I was in the room. However, if he started to unbuckle his pants as he entered the bathroom, I would immediately turn around and head the other direction. He thinks it's funny. I think it's gross.

Ranger told me that there were some campsites around that have treasure chests for outhouses. It's a chest-like box that has a hole and you sit on it, out in the open, and pray that no one comes upon you while you have your pants down. He said that it's very freeing to use one of those 'outhouses'. I thought the concept was terrifying and I know, if I had to use one, I would purposely hold everything in for the entire camping trip.

It was another reason why I didn't like camping. To be honest, I had never been but it was something that I had never wanted to do either. My idea of camping was a two or three-star hotel. Ranger had told me that he wasn't a fan of camping either. While he could do it and was good at it, it wasn't something he got excited about doing. That suited me fine. If he had intended for me to sleep on the dirt and eat bugs, I would have had to rethink our upcoming marriage.

I shut the door on Ranger as I used the facilities and, when I was finished in the washroom, I walked out to find him sitting on the bed. He had already changed into a t-shirt and a pair of sleep pants and had pulled off the shams and throw pillows to make room for me. He pulled the duvet back and helped me onto the bed. I sank into the mattress with a grateful sigh.

Here's the thing about Ranger's bed. It was his bed before I moved in, and the only thing about the bed that I would change was the headboard. Although I liked the walnut, I thought a padded headboard was more practical – especially since Ranger liked to wake me up with a coffee. While I suspected that practice might change when the baby was born, I didn't want to limit myself. I wanted to make sure my enjoyment of my morning coffee was as comfortable as possible.

So Ranger had this great bed. It was a king, and the sheets and duvet cover were at least a two thousand thread count of white organic Egyptian cotton. The duvet was just the right weight and warmth for whatever the temperature, and the mattress wasn't too firm, nor was too squishy. Like Goldilocks with the baby's bed, Ranger's bed was just right.

I sank down into the mattress and arranged myself so that I was in the least amount of pain possible and let Ranger's bed work its usual magic. By the time Ranger had emerged from the bathroom, I was half asleep.

Ranger got into bed and turned off the light. "I won't cuddle in tonight", he said. "I want you to be able to move unhindered and I'm afraid you won't sleep with me hanging onto you."

I think I mumbled an agreement, but I wasn't really sure and, because I fell asleep seconds later, I thought the point was moot anyway.

Partway through the night I woke up. My chest was killing me, but I didn't think that was what woke me. As I tried to figure out why I was awake, I heard Ranger moan. I eased my way over to his side and cuddled in. Ranger woke up slowly as I pressed kisses on his chest. "Oh, God", he said as he pulled me closer to him. He kissed me on the top of my head and ran his hands from my shoulder to my hips. I knew he was doing it for his own comfort rather than mine.

"Want to talk about it?" I said.

Ranger shuddered in a breath. He kissed me again on the top of my head and sighed. "I just had a bad dream."

"When I had that problem with my own bad dreams after I shot Pete Brodie, you told me that it was better to talk about the dreams rather than letting them fester – and you were right. What was your bad dream about?"

"I have seen you get shot twice in the last week. In my dream, you get shot again but this time you weren't wearing your bulletproof jacket. In my dream, you die. It is the single-most upsetting dream that I have ever had."

"Then I can only hope that it is based on a worry rather than a premonition."

Ranger buried his nose into the top of my head and sniffed my hair. I could hear his breathing even out and feel his heart rate settle. "I don't know how I'd cope if something happened to you", he said quietly. "You're my everything."

I wrapped one arm around his back and rubbed slowly, and he hummed in pleasure. He reminded me of a cat purring. "You're my everything too", I said.


	19. Chapter 19

I woke up mid-morning the next day with a pain in my chest and a powerful need to use the bathroom. I had somehow rolled onto my stomach while I was sleeping, and the agonizing discomfort of sleeping on my wound and broken bones was so strong that I was surprised I had been able to sleep at all.

I rolled over and pulled myself to a sitting position, and waited until the whirlies disappeared. Then I hustled into the bathroom and sat on the toilet with a sigh of relief.

Ranger came into the bathroom thinking about smiling.

"Ranger!" I said. I glared at him and tried to sit so that I wasn't showing anything.

Ranger's lips quirked up. "I was just trying to see if you needed any help."

"Ranger", I said in warning. I turned my squinty eye on him and he laughed.

"I'll just leave now", he said. "But I'll be just out here if you need me."

"Don't listen", I said.

"My hands are over my ears." I could hear the laughter in his voice. "You know, I've seen everything you have already."

"It's just gross, Ranger." I wiped and pushed myself to my feet and flushed, and I pulled up the pair of Ranger's sweatpants that I had worn to bed. I washed my hands and brushed my teeth and, as Ranger popped his head into the bathroom to ask me whether it was safe, my churning stomach was set off by me brushing my teeth and I just made it to the toilet in time to throw up.

"Fuck, that hurts", I said as I finished. I sat back on my heels and waited to see whether my stomach wanted to go another round. Ranger rubbed my back in sympathy, and then wet a facecloth with warm water and washed my face. When my stomach seemed to decide not to make another showing, Ranger helped me stand and walked with me into the kitchen.

"I have boiled the kettle for you", he said, "and Ella sent up a fruit salad and a raisin scone in case you were hungry."

"That sounds like something better left to a later time", I said. "She must be tired of making me raisin scones."

"She said she made you a big batch and individually wrapped them and put them in the freezer so that there would always be some there for you."

"Thank goodness."

"I had Cal bring up the rest of your clothes while you were sleeping. I was good and didn't even peek in the dress bag."

"Good", I said. "I'll put that in Julie's closet so that you aren't tempted to peek."

"Would I do that?" Ranger thought about smiling.

"I don't know. The call of the dress may be too much for you."

Ranger smiled. "You look like you got a good selection of clothes."

"I did. I didn't buy many things, but I got a good basic wardrobe."

"Do I get to see a fashion show?

I looked at him in surprise. "Do you want one?"

"You don't have to try them on", he said, "but I wouldn't mind seeing the clothes."

I smiled and pulled out each item in the bags. Ranger liked all the clothes. He especially liked the dress pants, the blazer, one of the skirts and one of the pullovers. They were black. "I tried to pick classic styles", I said, "as well, so that if I get pregnant again sometime the clothes will still be in style."

Ranger smiled. "After being as sick as you have been, do you still want more kids?"

"I don't want our baby to be a one and only. I think they learn a lot from their siblings and their siblings can be a good support."

Ranger snorted. "Like Val is to you?"

"She tries in her own way. She is just so happy in her life that she can't imagine anyone not living her life being happy otherwise."

"Do you think?" said Ranger. "I think it is instead that she is jealous of you. She has a lot to be jealous of."

I thought about that for a moment. "Maybe. Did you notice the last few times we have seen her that she was drinking quite heavily? It is like she is making up for the lost time during her pregnancy. I think at the last dinner with my parents she consumed a whole bottle of wine herself. You could tell this was a regular occurrence as well as she didn't even look particularly sloshed."

"I had noticed that."

"Meanwhile, my mother seems to have stopped her own drinking the last few times we have visited."

"The last time I saw her take a drink was when you told her that you were pregnant."

"That's true", I said. "I think my mother felt terrible about her reaction to my news." My mother had heard that I was in the hospital and had mistakenly assumed that I was in there because of chasing a skip. However, we had gone because I had started bleeding and we were scared that I was miscarrying. She blew up at Ranger and told him the most important thing for him to do was to get me pregnant as that would be the only way that he could force me to stay home and be safe. I ended up admitting that I was pregnant but that there was a good chance that I would lose the baby. I then went running out of the house. My mother blamed her drinking for her insensitivity. She thought that she should have picked up sooner on something being wrong. She hadn't had a drink since.

Ranger and I sat her down the next day and explained about what I did for a living and the relative safety of the job. When she heard that I didn't capture the violent skips and only went out on the calls where the skips were known sweeties or those I didn't feel posed any particular threat, she calmed down quite a lot. I predicted, however, that she would have a problem with my job again now that I had been shot twice. She would be thankful that I was doing research most of the time but with the second shooting will transfer her annoyance from Arlen himself to the job in general. It would be, I thought, a very uncomfortable Christmas dinner coming up.

"I haven't had my shower yet", said Ranger. "I purposely saved it so that we could shower together. I thought it might be difficult for you to bend over to wash your feet."

"I can't believe that I am saying this", I said, "but showering is all I think I can do."

"Babe", said Ranger. He paused and looked at me. "It didn't occur to me otherwise. Between the pain that you're in and the general stomach upset, I'd be absolutely gobsmocked if you wanted to do anything else."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not a big deal", he said. "I look at it this way. During this first trimester, you have to put up with feeling sick. I have to put up with not having sex. I'm getting the better deal here."

I laughed.

"Come on, babe. Let's shower."

I smiled and walked into the bathroom. I moved to take Ranger's sweatshirt off, but whimpered in pain. Ranger sprang forward and helped me out, and he pulled my pants and underwear off. I kicked him out of the bathroom again so that I could empty my bladder one more time. I had found that, like when you were planning on leaving the house, it was a good idea to empty your bladder prior to having a shower. Otherwise you'd get in, feel all that warm water, and have to tinkle. It was like putting your hand in warm water. You might not have had to tinkle prior to your hand getting wet, but it was guaranteed that you would have to tinkle afterwards. Ranger laughed as he left the bathroom, but I noticed that he had used the powder room before he re-joined me in the bathroom. I was thankful that he didn't try to use the bathroom while I was in it. He may like teasing me and he may think my reticence was silly, but he was still respectful of my views.

Ranger peeled off the bandage that was covering my stitches. They were luckily ones that were able to get wet. He led me into the shower and washed my hair and body gently, and I felt loved and cherished as he did it. He quickly washed himself while I thoroughly rinsed my hair and skin. Our shower hadn't taken long, but the hot water had eased some of the muscle soreness in my chest even if the steamy air made it hard to breathe.

Ranger dried me off carefully. "I can definitely now see your baby bump", he said. "It's incredibly sexy."

"Me looking fat is sexy?"

"You're not fat", said Ranger. "In fact, while I think you'd be in the normal range, I would think that you were on the smaller side of normal. Your waist is normally well-defined and your tummy flat. That's why your baby bump is so noticeable. On someone like Lula the bump would be impossible to notice at this stage. Instead you would just think that she had gained a couple of extra pounds."

"It's just too bad that I can't keep the increased boobs."

Ranger smiled. "Your boobs are perfect. I adore your boobs." He filled the sink with hot water, wet his shaving brush, and worked the soap into a lather. He proceeded to put the lather on his face and scrape his whiskers off.

"What are you thinking about?" I said as he rinsed his face and dried it on a towel. It had only taken minutes to shave his face, but it was a morning ritual I loved to watch. It was the one time that Ranger's emotions were unguarded. This morning he looked like he was having upsetting thoughts. His eyes were tight in his 'not happy' look; his body language was closed off and hard.

"I was thinking about you getting shot", he said, "and I was thinking about my nightmare in the middle of the night. Even now that I am fully awake, I am terrified that something will happen to you."

"It would be bad to lose the baby."

"I don't care about the baby. The baby is still a concept and isn't a living, breathing thing to me yet. The baby couldn't survive on its own, so to me it's not a person. Even if it was, I would still be more concerned about you. We can make another baby or we could remain childless. What is important to me, the only thing that is important to me, is that you are healthy and happy. The rest is just noise." Tears came to my eyes.

"You really wouldn't care if the baby died?"

"I would care because it would upset you. I would care because, if the baby died, that would mean that you were likely in some distress as well. I would care because I love you. But I wouldn't miss the baby as it is still a concept to me."

"But you are happy about the baby?"

"I am, but I'd be happy childless as well, as long as we still get married and as long as you are still by my side. Having kids was never the be-all and end-all for me like it is for some people. I am happy with you and I can't imagine being any happier."


	20. Chapter 20

The men came and moved over the furniture for the den just after lunch, and we soon had a working den again on the other side of the apartment. The furniture for Julie's room arrived about a half hour after that. We had bought Julie a king-sized bed, a dresser, and a chair for the corner of the room. We had also bought a rocking chair for the baby's room that we couldn't resist. It had been, we thought, the perfect chair and we didn't want to take the chance that we couldn't find it again closer to the due date when we purchased the nursery furniture. The chair was upholstered in a cream microsuede that was spot-cleanable. I had checked.

I spent a lot of my day on the sofa with my feet up. Except when people were moving furniture around, I was pretty immobile. Not only did it hurt to move, but Ranger glared at me every time I got off the sofa. In a compromise, however, Ranger and I agreed that I didn't have to lay flat on my back. Partly that was for my own comfort, as lying on my back was much more uncomfortable than sitting upright. According to the doctor, the more upright I could be, the better it would be for me. I could tell the difference. It was easier to breathe upright.

Since Ranger didn't want me to stress myself by looking into Arlen's past – and I didn't want to stress Ranger by not resting fully – I talked to my mom for a while and eased her mind and, when she was calm and reassured that I wasn't on death's door, I searched Pinterest for nursery décor ideas. After much searching, I picked out my favorite rooms for a boy, for a girl, and a gender-neutral décor in case we had an elephant or something. While I didn't want to pigeonhole the baby into either a girl or a boy nursery, I thought having touches of the more gender-specific nursery colors would be nice.

Although we weren't decorating the nursery in the current apartment with baby-appropriate paint or décor, I wanted to know the kind of décor we were heading towards. The baby's furniture was the only furniture that we'd be taking with us when we moved to the new tower, and I wanted to coordinate with the room that we were planning. When we moved, we'd be replacing the crib in this apartment with another king-sized bed and a dresser and an occasional chair. The den would remain a combination tv room and office, and would be able to sleep two on the pullout sofa. Similarly, the sofa in the living room was also a pullout, which meant that the apartment would be able to sleep six comfortably and could easily stretch to ten.

While I would miss the gas fireplace in the den, I thought it would be a nice feature in the nursery. We wouldn't have it on frequently, but I thought it would be nice when we were up feeding the baby in the middle of the night. Ranger and I kept the apartment fairly cool, especially at night, as we found we slept better that way. It did, however, mean that being up at night when you were already cold from exhaustion would be tough, and I was sure that we would appreciate the warmth and comfort of the fireplace.

When I got tired of looking at nursery décor, I started to look at décor for the rest of our apartment. I happily pinned photos of things that I liked to my Pinterest board and by the end of the day I had been able to create a story board of ideas to talk to Ranger about.

So I daydreamed the day away, curled up under the blanket that Connie had made me. Ranger, however, worked all day. He had to catch up on a lot of work after taking so much time off the two days that I had gotten shot. By the end of the weekend, Ranger said that he felt like he was in a fairly good space to go into the Christmas week. I knew this meant that he was almost caught up rather than that he was ahead of the curve. I rather suspected that he'd be working Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day just to stay as up-to-date as he was. That was fine by me. I had a lot of backlog to do as well. I was barely keeping my head above water, and having both Miguel and Dirk off for the week wouldn't help the Research Department catch up. Hell, neither had me being off so much in the last twelve weeks.

So, when Monday morning came, I got up shortly after Ranger left the apartment for his workout. I had slept so much the day before and had rested the whole time when I wasn't sleeping that I didn't need the extra sleep in the morning. Plus, there was that whole uncomfortable-while-lying-down thing. I had woken when Ranger got up and couldn't get comfortable again.

I wrapped myself in Ranger's housecoat. His always smelled good, and I got a lot of pleasure out of wearing his clothes. It made me feel closer to him. He said he liked it when I wore his clothes as well. He thought it was arousing to think that his clothes were touching my naked skin, and he was reassured by the fact that I found comfort in wearing his things.

I put the kettle on for a cup of peppermint tea. I had found that peppermint tea worked well for settling my stomach but, even better, was flat ginger ale. However, I looked in the fridge and saw that the bottle of flat ginger ale had been consumed the day before, and I couldn't ask Ella for another bottle before six in the morning. If I called her, she would think that something was wrong.

While I was looking through the fridge and the cupboards for something I thought I could keep down, I came across the bag of raisins. I turned to Rex, my hamster, and saw him looking at me, his nose twitching as he prepared himself for the bounty that was about to be bestowed. His beady eyes were wide with excitement and he was up on his hind legs watching me intently.

Who was I to disappoint him? I opened the bag and took out a raisin to put in his dish, and he immediately ran over and stuffed the raisin in his cheek pouch. He hurried over to his plastic igloo where he stored his treats and dove through the opening. Ranger had bought the plastic igloo for Rex. Before he had a plastic igloo, I had given him an empty soup can to hide his treats. Unlike with the soup can, the plastic igloo fit Rex better. His ass didn't even stick out the end of his hidey-hole in his new abode.

Wanting to keep Rex company, I took a handful of raisins for myself. It was, to be honest, the only thing that I wanted to eat. My theory is that was why I liked the raisin scones so much. The bread-y part of the scone settled my stomach and the raisins provided something the baby needed. I guessed as cravings went, raisins were good cravings to have. At least it wasn't like my sister's craving for gravy. With all five of her pregnancies, she craved gravy so badly that she would pour it over ice cream for dessert and have it with her corn flakes for breakfast. I had even seen her drink the gravy from the gravy boat at dinner. Needless to say, she had gained about eighty pounds with each pregnancy that she then had to struggle to get off again. Since her most recent baby was three months old, she was in the stage of having to watch what she ate, and was horrendously grumpy as a result. The last meal I was at with her, she was stuffing her face with whatever food that was put in front of her. She said she was following the 5:2 diet, where you eat 500 calories two days a week and whatever you want for the remainder. I didn't have confidence that it would work. It seemed like she ate a LOT of whatever she wanted on those five days a week, and I didn't think only two low-calorie days would make up the difference.

By the time Ranger returned from the gym, I had consumed a cup of peppermint tea and three small handfuls of raisins. Ella bought them for Rex, but I had asked and he didn't answer so I guessed he didn't mind sharing. I just told him that I would save him one or two for his breakfast the following few days. And I promised to give him some green pepper or cucumber or carrot out of the salad at dinner. He told me that he preferred raisins, but he would take what he could get. I empathized. I preferred dessert over dinner as well.

I was quite proud and relieved that I'd been able to keep as much food and liquids down as I had. I thought that Ranger might have been right and I was coming out of the morning sickness now. Although I felt nauseous, I wasn't in danger of losing my breakfast, and that was the first time in a long time that I felt as comfortable as I was. I was especially glad, as I knew from the day before, vomiting with broken ribs was a painful experience.

I decided that I would work in the apartment again that day. My laptop was already there and it was easier to keep my feet up while working at the apartment than it was at the office. I was looking forward to sinking my teeth into the research on Arlen. I didn't know how I was going to find out about his involvement in other heists, but I was willing to take a stab at it. I thought about all the detective shows that I had ever seen on television, and they all said the same thing. Crimes were committed for money or for love, so to discover the crime you had to trace the social connections and follow the money. That I could do.

When Ranger returned to the apartment after his workout, he was dripping in sweat. "Good workout, I see", I said with a smile.

Ranger thought about smiling. "I worked on the heavy bag for a while", he said, "and then I went for a long run."

"Am I remembering correctly that you had another nightmare last night?"

A look of frustration washed over Ranger's face. "I did. Seeing you get shot those two times scared the hell out of me and I think it will be some time before I recover. I know from experience that it will just take time."

"Have you ever suffered from nightmares like this before?"

Ranger smiled sadly. "Yeah", he said. "I had been on some missions that gave everyone nightmares. I know from experience that you just have to wait them out and that they do eventually go away on their own. However, it's disturbing and upsetting to have to live through them at the time."

"Do you think you should be meeting with Gabriel to talk about things?" Gabriel was our newly-hired resident psychiatrist. With hiring primarily staff that worked previously for the military, Ranger had found that mental health was such a concern with his employees that it just made sense to hire someone on full-time to tend to the needs of the staff. Although Gabriel had just started a couple of weeks ago, he was already booked a month in advance.

"If things don't improve, I will. However, I'll try to deal with it myself first. Working out and getting rid of my upset that way is a good start. When Tank gets back I'll be able to spar with him."

"Why don't you spar with Hal while you wait for Tank to come back? Hal is very good at self-defense as well, isn't he?"

"Yes, he is. I could ask him whether he'd mind."

"Somehow I think he'd be honored."

"I need a shower."

"So do I. I was hoping you'd help me again."

"I'd be happy to."

I used the powder room before following Ranger into the bathroom. By the time I arrived he had already turned on the shower so that it could warm up and had stripped off his damp t-shirt and shorts. He helped me remove my clothing and held the door for me so that I could enter the shower before him.

Like Ranger's bed, Ranger's shower was the nicest I had ever seen. It was a two-person shower and had rainforest showerheads and body sprays, and I knew from experience that it was just the right size for us to completely satisfy each other. While I didn't feel up to it that morning, I was looking forward to completely satisfying each other again in the near future.

I must have looked sad as Ranger washed me off, as he gave me a kiss and asked me what was wrong.

"I remember when we would make love in the shower. Now, the mind is willing but the body is not."

"I understand. It won't be for forever, babe. We'll make love again and I predict that it will happen sooner rather than later. You are slowly getting over your morning sickness. I already see huge improvements from how you felt two weeks ago. You are throwing up less and eating more." He stood me under the spray to rinse off as he quickly washed himself, and a few minutes later Ranger was drying me off and wrapping me in his housecoat.

"I miss the closeness of making love with you", I said. "It's been especially hard lately with being unable to cuddle at night."

"I know, babe. But again, this won't be for forever. Your bones will heal soon enough."

"I want them to heal now."

"I know, babe, but you have to be patient."

"I'm not the most patient person in the world."

"I know that, but you are going to have to learn to be patient. These things take time, and that's okay. You'll be back to normal soon."


	21. Chapter 21

I reviewed the material I had pulled up when I prepared Arlen's initial capture report. It contained the basic information – married, three kids under the age of five, owned his own house outright despite never having held a job in his life. His parents were not wealthy, so being able to support himself and his family without earning an income was a little suspect. I started creating a research report.

I searched up his social media and found some names of people that repeatedly appeared. One of those people was the bank teller who had stolen the money from the bank. I looked into all the people that appeared frequently. The bank teller made regular trips down to Atlantic City and gambled large sums of money at the casinos there. Again, that was money he shouldn't have had. The other four people, like Arlen, appeared to meet high expenses but not have the income to support them. Like Arlen, there was no family money in their backgrounds.

After investigating the social connections and making note of what I found, I followed the money trail. I made note of the dates that large sums of money were deposited and checked out the dates that equally large sums of money were deposited in the accounts of Arlen's friends. There seemed to be a whole lot of coincidence. I personally thought a case was there, but I knew that coincidence wouldn't win the case – especially if the jury was sensitive to the fact that he was newly widowed and responsible for three preschoolers. After all, it was Christmas and people may be empathetic to the needs of the children over the holiday season. While I agreed with putting kids first, I also agreed that people shouldn't get away with murder – almost literally.

I thought it was incredibly stupid of Arlen and his gang to put their heists into the bank. It made my life easier, but I shook my head as I looked through their banking information.

After tracking the bank deposits in the close friends and family of Arlen and his wife, I then searched for crimes that had been committed around the times of the deposits. For the last two years, there were nine large deposits – and there were several large crimes that had been perpetuated around those times. I added together all the deposits by Arlen and the other people on his suspected crew and looked into the large crimes, and identified a couple in each case that looked like good potentials.

In the further avenues that I suggested for Morelli to explore, I thought he would benefit from looking at the crime reports for the different heists, as well as reviewing the security videos. I also said that I still had to look into the bank teller in depth.

I wrote it up in my report and sent it through to Morelli. When my report had been sent, I phoned Morelli to tell him that it had come in. "Hey", I said when he answered.

"How are you? I've been thinking about you all day."

"I'm good. Still sore, but I'm not panicking like I was on the weekend. It helps that there hasn't been any bleeding at all, and before we left the hospital on Saturday we were able to see another ultrasound of the baby and were reassured that the baby would be okay."

"Ranger called me on Sunday morning. He said you were sleeping, but he gave me an update and told me about the results of the imaging."

"I'm glad he did that. I should have called you yesterday."

"It wasn't necessary."

"I did that report for you. It should be in your inbox."

"What did you find out?"

I told him about the friends that I had identified. I told him about the regular deposits and how they corresponded with different heists that had happened in Trenton and Newark over the last two years. And I told him that none of the five people who had those regular deposits – all on the same day – appeared to have jobs, or had family money behind them to be able to afford the lifestyle that they had.

"Did you have a chance to look into Terence's life, the brother-in-law that worked at the bank?" said Morelli.

"Not yet. I wanted to get Arlen's results to you as soon as I could."

"Thank you. I appreciate that."

"I'll work on the brother-in-law tomorrow. At first glance, something seems hinky in that as well. He has worked at three banks previously, and each one has had a robbery done while he was on duty. He also seems to be living above his means."

"Do you have any idea where to look for him?"

"I'll create a capture plan for him tomorrow, and I'll trace any money deposits and look at all incoming and outgoing monies and report on those as well."

"That would be a great help. I went by his house a few times today, but he appears to have flown the coop. Any information you can give me regarding where he might be would be helpful."

"I'll look into it tomorrow."

"Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Will you be working?"

"Yes. I'm so far behind it's not funny, and Ranger is having the same problem. Taking two days to go to the hospital last week didn't help. We'll be working a full day tomorrow and a full day on Boxing Day, but we were thinking of taking the day off on Christmas. What are you doing for the holiday?"

"I'm on call, so unless I pull something I will be going with my mom and grandmother to Christmas Eve mass, and be with the family for Christmas Day dinner. As much as I would like to get out of it, my family would be upset if I didn't go or, at least, they would be upset if I didn't have a good excuse. I was planning on doing some work on the Arlen files on Christmas morning. I was hoping to find the brother-in-law with the family on Christmas Day. Maybe if I am lucky something in the case will break and I will be able to get out of Christmas with the family."

"You like your family."

"I do, but when you are one of the people being prayed over at the family meal since you aren't attached to anyone, and when everyone in the family all wants to know when you are planning on finding someone to marry, it tends to take the fun out of family functions."

"I'm sorry."

Morelli snorted. "Not your fault, cupcake. I got a few years of respite when we were going out together, but now the insanity has started again. It seems to be worse now that Mario is in jail." Earlier in the year, when Morelli and I were still going out, Morelli's brother Mario tried to kill me. He luckily wasn't successful. "It's like my mother and grandmother want to have something good in their lives, and they have decided that I'm the person to bring it to them. Now that Angie is divorcing Mario, the pressure has been turned up on me."

"That sucks."

"Yeah. So I'm hoping something breaks on this story and it gets me out of mass and dinner."

"I don't know. Arlen really thinks Terence flew the coop."

"Okay. I'll look into it."

"I might do some work tonight but, if I don't, I will definitely do some work on the file tomorrow and will call you when I have something that I am sending over."

I got off the phone and wandered over to the Julie's room. Ella had been in earlier and made the bed so that it was ready for her to sleep in it. I had to admit that her bedroom looked welcoming and I could only hope that Julie liked it. Ranger and I had put quite a bit of time into selecting things that we thought she would like. I had been working with Julie and we'd been shooting Pinterest pins back and forth while we worked on the room design. Julie knew that she was getting her own room when we moved into the new apartment and thought that the pictures she was sending me were for the new apartment, but she didn't know that she would have her own room when she came over the Christmas holidays and that we had tried to incorporate as many ideas of hers into her own room in the existing apartment as we could.

I opened the door to the closet and looked at my wedding dress again. I liked it just as much this time as I did when I bought it, which I thought was a good sign. I held it up and took a picture of it and sent it to my mother and grandmother and told them that I was keeping it a secret from Ranger, before putting it back in the dress bag and hiding it in the closet.

I took out the Christmas presents that I had wrapped for Ranger the week before, glad that I had done the wrapping as I got the presents rather than waiting until the last minute like I usually did. Bending over and moving the presents around to wrap them would be painful with my injuries. I walked out to the living room. Ella had bought us a huge white poinsettia plant that we had centered on the credenza, situated on a red metallic charging plate. In lieu of a Christmas tree, we were spreading the presents around the plant and on the floor close by. I had put out the presents to my family, and for Ella and Luis and Tank and Nate and Morelli, and for Ranger's family. I added the presents for Ranger as well. I left his stocking stuffers in the stocking in the closet. I had talked to his mother and she had told me that Ranger didn't have a dedicated stocking and, since he was never with them on Christmas morning, it hadn't been an issue. I thought that had to change. I had searched a long time to find the perfect stocking. I ended up getting one handmade through Etsy. It was a lot of money, but I figured he would have it for a long time. I ordered a coordinating one for myself. I had my old stocking from when I was growing up, but the stocking was falling apart and needed to be replaced. I was pleased with my purchase and was looking forward to seeing what Ranger's reaction would be.

I looked at my watch. Ranger would be up for dinner in another hour, which gave me time to either have a nap or to look into Arlen's brother-in-law. I yawned, stretched and winced. Nap it was. Ranger would be pleased. He was always getting exasperated with me over my failure to look after myself. I tried to for him, just because he worried about me otherwise. It was funny. He was the calmest, coolest person you could ever meet. He didn't appear to worry about anything. He said that he doesn't believe in worry as it wasn't a productive emotion. However, that was his persona. In fact, he worried about _everything_. He didn't like thinking about 'what ifs' but he was the kind of person who was always one step ahead, always had plans and backup plans and backup backup plans all worked out before he even embarked on a course of action. He didn't let worry rule him, but he worried. He cared about people so damn much. He cared about his company, and he cared about the health and happiness of every employee. He cared deeply about his family and he cared deeply about his friends and adopted family. I had never met someone who cared as much as he did about everything. I thought it was a good thing that he didn't let worry rule him. If he did, he wouldn't be able to cope.

Ranger cared about everybody, but he didn't care about anyone more than he cared about me. I knew that, and I felt like a very lucky person to have his love. Our child would be equally as important in Ranger's life, and like me would be the luckiest person alive.


	22. Chapter 22

After dinner, Ranger made me a banana smoothie for dessert. He said it was healthy, that it had potassium and calcium and magnesium and fiber and all sorts of stuff that is good for me and good for the baby. That didn't matter to me. What mattered to me was that they tasted good, they stayed down, and with Ranger's addition of either a touch of maple syrup or a touch of vanilla, they were the closest thing to happy food that I'd had in almost three months.

I sipped at the drink as Ranger put the leftover food away, washed the immersion blender and put the dishes in the dishwasher. "Do you mind if I work this evening?" he said. "I'm so incredibly swamped, and I'm trying to free up the full day on Christmas. I want to be able to spend the morning in bed with you, have a lazy breakfast, a slow time with you in front of the fire opening our presents, and a long, hot shower followed by going to your family's place for dinner."

"I'd actually prefer it. I still have to look into the bank teller's background. I sent Morelli the research on Arlen this afternoon before my nap, but he needs the information about the bank teller yesterday and, because I took a nap this afternoon, I didn't get it done."

"I'm glad you took that nap. Between the baby making you more tired and your sleep not being of good quality from your injuries, all mixed with your need to rest to heal, and it makes sense for you to nap frequently. Did you have a good sleep?"

"I did. I was getting very tired."

Ranger's face lightened as he looked at me, and I could feel his love as surely as if it was a tangible thing. He came over to me and dropped a kiss on the top of my head. "Thank you", he said. "I know that looking after yourself doesn't come naturally to you, but I appreciate that you are trying."

I leaned into him and rested my head on his abdomen. He massaged my shoulders and I turned and pressed a kiss into his six-pack. His stomach, like the rest of his body, was hard.

After resting my head against his body for a moment, I straightened. "Give me three or four hours to get this work done, and then I'll be ready for bed."

Ranger smiled. "Babe", he said.

He followed me into the den. He settled himself behind the desk as I stretched out on the sofa and moved the laptop to my knee. I accessed the email that Morelli had sent me with Terence's name, put the name into the In-Spect program, and started to create a capture plan. I came up with a number of places Morelli could look for Terence, from the family cabin in the woods to his girlfriend's place and his favorite restaurant, his usual grocery store, and the gas station he normally frequented. When I completed that, I worked on getting the evidence needed to show that he was involved in more than the one bank heist. I did. The first heist was two years ago – and then again three months later at the same bank. Terence claimed stress and applied to a different bank for a job as the person working in the cage. He didn't get that job, but he did get a job as a teller. There was a robbery at the bank but they never found the person who was responsible. Terence was transferred to another branch – the branch that had just been robbed.

Terence had a gambling problem. He was spending more money than he had at the tables, but he was getting influxes of money around the same time as the banks had been robbed. I tracked the money ebbs and flows.

I put it all together and wrote a report. Then I emailed the report to Morelli. I sent him a text to let him know that the report had gone through. Seconds later Morelli called me. "I just got your text", he said. "Thanks for doing that, cupcake. I hope you didn't work too hard on this."

"I'm fine. I'll sleep in tomorrow. It makes sense anyway, since I feel much better at night than I do in the morning."

"Okay. I appreciate it. I had another file come across my desk for you today, but I didn't want to give it to you until you had a chance to complete this one. People are saying how grateful they have been to have access to Rangeman's research team. You have been breathing new life into cases that had no leads. I have more people wanting to use your skills than less, and the Chief has told me that I have to cut back on the number of requests that I do because of the cost factor. He has limited the investigations to four a week, and I have people clamoring to be one of the four."

"I'm glad that the TPD has found our services to be useful."

"We have, incredibly so. I just wanted to thank you."

We talked for a few minutes longer before I hung up the phone. I looked up at Ranger. He was still knee deep in work, and he didn't look like he wanted to stop. "I'm going to have a glass of orange juice and go to bed", I said. "Are you going to continue working?"

"Do you mind?"

"Not at all. I know how swamped you are."

"I'll be glad when John starts in another week." John Parks was the new HR manager that Ranger had hired. When he started, Ranger would have an incredible amount of work taken off his plate.

"I know. I'll be glad as well. I know how snowed under you are."

"You are just as overwhelmed."

"Not quite. I just have the research department to look after. You have everyone."

"I am also in the process of signing three companies on. They want to start their new security system on January second, so be prepared for a lot of work coming down the pipe."

"The TPD apparently has four files for me to do as well. Are the companies big?"

"Big enough. One has ninety-one employees, one has forty-three employees, and the last has one hundred and twenty-seven employees."

I blanched. "And you want it all done by January second?"

"No." He smiled as I breathed a sigh of relief. "The systems have been designed and the client will have their paperwork signed by January second. The hardware is to be implemented by the end of January. In one case, cybersecurity is also doing a review and I want that review and recommendations to be done by the end of February. I'd ideally like to have the corporate review done by this time as well. Sales has another five meet and greets for me to do when I get back from Colombia. In the meantime, Design is working on their configurations. The paperwork won't be signed though until I do the meet and greets, but there is that work coming as well."

"Jesus. What do you think about paying Dirk and Miguel overtime for the month of January so that we get caught up? I'm worried about the amount of work we have outstanding and, with these new companies, the huge book of work coming at us soon."

"I think, if Dirk and Miguel are up for it, overtime is a great idea. Like you, I'm worried about the amount outstanding."

"Okay. I'll send them texts tomorrow to let them know that they need to rearrange their month of January to include the overtime."

"Thanks, babe."

"I'll get some orange juice, and then go to bed. Can I get you anything?"

"Can you put on the coffee? It's going to be a long night."

"Don't work too hard", I said. I kissed him on the top of his head and left the room. I wandered into Julie's room again and smiled. I thought that she would love it. Then I wandered into the kitchen and put on the coffee for Ranger. I drank a cold glass of orange juice and, because that was so good, I drank another. Then I poured Ranger a cup of coffee and took it to his desk. He smiled at me. "Thanks, babe", he said.

I gave him another kiss and left for the bedroom.

I was pleased that Ranger had helped me into some sleepwear before dinner and I didn't have to disturb him again. I finished in the washroom and climbed into bed. I thought that I must be healing as I was able to do so without groaning and complaining too much. I pulled over Ranger's pillow and, minutes later, was asleep.

The sun was coming up when I felt Ranger tug on his pillow. I let it go. "Are you back from your workout?" I said in surprise. I hadn't even heard him get up.

"Shh, babe. I'm just coming to bed. I'm skipping my workout today and will just sleep. See you in about four hours." He gathered me into his arms and rested his arm over my waist. "Does this hurt?" he said.

"No", I said. I lied. The weight of his arm did hurt a bit, but I was enjoying the cuddle so much that I didn't want him to move his arm. I had missed the snuggling immensely, and a little pain was worth it to have the togetherness.

Ranger closed his eyes, sighed and within minutes was asleep. I closed my eyes in happiness, nosed his chest and sniffed the comforting and sexy smell of Bulgari Green, and drifted into sleep myself.

I woke up three hours later, still nestled into Ranger. I needed to use the facilities, and I carefully extricated myself from his arms. He woke sleepily as I started to move. "You okay?" he said.

"Yes", I said softly. "Go back to sleep."

I left the bed and used the washroom and brushed my teeth. By the time I got out of the washroom, Ranger was sound asleep again. I crept out of the bedroom and shut the door softly, made myself a cup of tea, and searched through the freezer for a scone. I knew that Ella had put some in the freezer for me the week before but, since she generally included one with Ranger's breakfast, I hadn't had to take one out yet. However, this morning I was hungry and the tea was sitting well. I sighed with relief. Ranger had been right. The morning sickness was finally receding and, as the doctor said, I should be feeling a whole lot better by the end of January. That would be good timing since the wedding was to take place the third week of February.

I wondered what Ranger and I would do about a honeymoon. It wasn't something we had talked about and, to be honest, we were both so overwhelmed with work that I couldn't see us having the ability to take time off. Not with needing to take time off in July for the baby. There was only so much time that Ranger could afford and the time in July was more important. Additionally, it made sense in a lot of ways. By July, hopefully, Ranger wouldn't have so much work on his plate. However, a weekend away together would be nice, and I wondered if I should suggest it to Ranger. Even if we went down to Miami and he combined it with a site visit to his other office.

I found the bag of scones, removed one, took off the stretch wrap and put it on a plate. I heated it in the microwave and seconds later was carrying it into the den with my tea. I sat on the sofa, pulled my laptop onto my knee, and nibbled at the scone and drank my tea as I started to work for the day.

By the time Ranger got up, I had been able to get caught up on the Sales requests. It was a huge chunk of work and I was happy to have it done. I planned on doing the outstanding capture plans for the rest of the day. I used to send them to Tank for his review, but with the office reorganization I now sent them to Hal. With Tank being gone and Ranger assuming his duties in his absence, I was especially glad that I now sent them to Hal. It made Ranger's life a little saner.

I could hear Ranger emerge from the bedroom, walk through to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee and the kettle for another cup of tea. He came into the den a few seconds later. "Thanks for letting me sleep", he said.

"No problem. Did you get a lot of work done last night?"

"Yes. I've been working with Mike on the system design for a new client, and I was able to get it into a condition last night that I was happy with. Mike had been able to get it eighty percent of the way there, but there needed to be a little more work done on the design. I was also able to book staff for implementations, arrange designs for other companies, overview some cybersecurity programs, and review the staff scheduling for the holiday period. Hal had predicted that there would be more problems over the holidays rather than less with people being absent from their companies and homes, so he has put additional staff on patrol and, since it is the holidays, has switched out shifts from eight hours to four hours in length. I think that was a smart move."

"That will certainly make things nicer for staff."

"It will. It means that all hands will be on deck, but because the shifts are shorter people are happy to do them. The other benefit is that, with the shorter shifts, Ella doesn't have to cook for the staff. I have also given Ella the day off today and tomorrow and Boxing Day. She doesn't get many days off. It was hard to get her to accept the time off, but she and Luis have now made plans with family and friends. Hal had told people that he was trying it out this year and, as long as it worked, he would be doing it for the majority of holidays. He asked for staff feedback and there were only a couple of people who didn't like the new scheduling. Most people were enthusiastic about it. Hal is doing a good job."

"He will be pleased. I sent over eight capture plans this morning."

"Staff will be happy. They really enjoy doing the captures."

"Have you heard anything from Jeanne Ellen lately?"

"She seems to have disappeared. I don't know if she has just gone away for the holidays or whether she has gone away for good. It was good that I had already created the job requirements and description for the Operations staff. Nate was able to quickly get that information out to Jeanne Ellen's lawyer. In it, it is obvious that Jeanne Ellen doesn't qualify for the positions."

"It is a good thing that you didn't put in the standard line that an equivalent of education and experience would be considered in lieu of military training."

"That's true. We didn't put that line in on purpose. Tank and I used to have that line in but, after hiring a few people over the summer who didn't have a military background and having their performance fail so thoroughly, we took that line out. We absolutely want staff to have military training as it reduces the amount of training that we need to give."

"On another note, I have to take the checks to the bank today, the checks that I didn't end up depositing last week. I could use the cash infusion."

"Okay. Do you want to take Amelia with you?"

"I don't think that it's necessary but, if you'd like the training exercise for Amelia, I can absolutely take her."

"I know that you have a restraining order for Arlen, but I am still concerned. It might be because of what you went through the last week, but I don't have a good feeling about this. However, it is just a feeling and I don't have any proof that it is a bad idea."

"I don't have a good feeling either, but I think that is in reaction to what happened and I know for myself that I need to get out of the building before I let my fears stand in my way. I could very easily grow too anxious to leave the building and I don't want that to happen."

Ranger looked at me for a moment. "Fair enough", he said. "When do you want to do this?"

"In about an hour? That gives me some time to have a shower."

Ranger smiled suddenly. "I could make sure that you are very clean."

I grinned. "I kept my breakfast down today."

"You are still too sore to help me", said Ranger. "But that doesn't mean that I can't help you, and I would very much like to help you."

"You're a very helpful person."

"I am. I like helping you very much. In fact, helping you is one of my favorite things to do."

I smiled. I liked him helping me too.


	23. Chapter 23

Ranger helped me twice in the shower and I watched him help himself once, which he said was incredibly hot. I personally would have been embarrassed if I was him, but that was me. While I helped myself from time to time, I didn't want anyone watching me while I did it.

After Ranger dried me off, he assisted me while I was getting dressed. I still had trouble getting my bra strap done up, and lifting my arms above my head was uncomfortable. He dressed me in my new pair of jeans and an oversized navy sweater. Ella had washed my new clothes the day before, and like Ranger' clothes they smelled amazing.

We took the elevator down to the fifth floor and at Ranger's office I gave him a kiss and parted with him for the day.

I met Amelia in Dave's office. "Hey", I said. "I heard you're guarding me today."

"That's true", said Ameila. "It will be a pleasure to guard you."

"Hopefully nothing happens that you have to guard me against", I said. "However, this is what is going on." I told her about getting shot on the weekend and what that had meant to me. "Arlen has a restraining order on me", I said. "However, that doesn't mean that he won't approach me again."

"Okay. Do you have a picture of him?"

I pulled out my phone and accessed the file I had sent to Morelli. I pulled up the picture and showed Amelia. She inspected it and asked me to send it to her. I did, and a few seconds later she confirmed that she had got it.

She put on her gun holster and a jacket, and walked with me to the elevators, descended to the parking garage, and sat behind the wheel. She adjusted the seat and her mirrors to her smaller stature and set out for the bank.

When we got there, I noticed Terence working on the desk that had the chairs in front of it, the desk for those in wheelchairs or for seniors. While I didn't necessarily want to deal with Terence, I hoped that I'd be able to sit when I did my transactions. My ribs were quite sore and I knew I needed to sit down soon. I sent a text to Morelli to let him know of Terence's location. I then sent a text to Amelia to let her know what was going on. I could have just whispered it to her, but I didn't want to take the chance that anyone overheard me.

As luck would have it, Terence was the teller that was open when it was my turn. Amelia stood facing Terence. I was happy to have Amelia's support. It had taken me a bit to muster my bravery to leave Rangeman. I didn't think that I was a very courageous person, and having been shot twice in the last week – once in the same bank – made things difficult. However, having Amelia there was a big help. It was especially hard knowing that the teller who was to be serving me was Terence.

As I retrieved my bank card from my wallet and gave it to Terence, I saw the police drive to the front of the building. Seconds later, Morelli joined the officers standing in front of the bank. They walked in, en masse, and approached the line of wickets. Terence, as he saw the police approaching, vaulted over the desk and grabbed me around the neck. He pulled me to a standing position and stood, his front to my back. I could feel myself turn white with pain. He had pulled on my broken ribs.

He looked out over the police officers and patrons. "Nobody move", he said as he pulled out a switchblade from his pocket, opened it up and held it to my throat. "I'm going to walk out of here, nice and slow."

A wave of terror washed over me. If I died, what would happen to the baby? The baby would die as well. I swallowed hard. I didn't want the baby to die. My breath came hard and fast as I tried to contain my panic.

"You don't want to do that, Terence", said Morelli.

"I absolutely want to do this. This bitch killed my sister."

"No, she didn't. Your sister shot Stephanie, and your sister was shot because of it. Stephanie had nothing to do with it other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Drop the knife", said Amelia. "I know you can feel my gun in the small of your back. I won't tell you again. Drop the knife or I will shoot."

"I just have a knife and you have a gun. You won't shoot", said Terence. "Police don't shoot without provocation."

"Luckily I'm not an officer", she said. "Besides, there is provocation. You are holding Stephanie hostage."

"You won't shoot me. I don't believe that you even have a gun."

"Do you really want to test this out to see?" said Amelia. "Let her go."

"No."

"What do you want?" said Morelli. "After all, you have Stephanie and you must want something."

"I want to get out of here", said Terence. "I want an armored car to take me to a private jet."

I snorted. "I'm not worth that much. You might have gotten your way if you asked for a taxi to take you to the bus station, but an armored car to take you to a private jet? No way in hell."

"I can't do that", said Morelli. "What do you want that I can do?"

"I want a fucking armored car to take me to the fucking airport", said Terence. He sounded like he was losing control, and I could tell that Morelli was worried. He didn't break eye contact with Terence. I thought that maybe Morelli was trying to mind-meld with him, and that by not breaking eye contact with him he was trying to control both him and his actions.

"The TPD doesn't have an armored car", said Morelli, "and we don't have a private jet."

"Then find one."

"I don't know anyone that has an armored car, or anyone who owns a private jet. I'm sorry, but it's just not possible."

Terence pressed the knife against my throat, and I guess it looked bad because Morelli looked frantic. His face was white with fear. When he arrived, he looked angry. But now he looked like he had passed anger and gone into mind-blowing terror. I tried to smile at him and tell him that it was okay. I don't know if he got my message or not. But I had passed mind-blowing terror a while ago, and now I was feeling detached and focused. I could think, and that was a good place to be. So I stomped on his instep with the heel of my boot as hard as I could. While I wasn't wearing heels, the sole of my boot was hard and I was able to stomp with ferocity.

When the foot stomp diverted his attention, Amelia reached around and grabbed his knife hand. She squeezed and twisted his hand until his fingers popped open. The knife clattered to the ground and Amelia kicked it towards Morelli. He bent over to pick it up, and he shut the blade and bagged it for evidence.

"Hey, I like that knife", said Terence. "Give it back."

"Terence", said Amelia. "You know that won't happen. And you know that your exit has been blocked off. You know that I have a gun and you don't have a weapon at all. You know that it will go better for you if you let Stephanie go."

I thought that I was tired of talking. From what Amelia said, Terence didn't have any other weapon at hand, which meant that I could fight back any way I wanted. I jabbed my elbow back in his solar plexus as hard as I could and followed that up with a donkey kick to his knee. He crumpled and swore, and I could feel his arms let me go. I sprang away and looked at Amelia. She had re-holstered her gun and was holding his arms behind him.

Morelli threw me a set of cuffs, and I put them on Terence as Morelli approached us. "You okay, cupcake?" A uniform came and collected Terence and took him out to a squad car.

My teeth started to chatter. "Just hunky-dory", I said.

Morelli pulled me into a hug and slowly rubbed my back for a moment, but pulled away when I got my shaking under control. "Ranger will be here any minute", he said.

"You called him?"

"I called him from the car on the way here, and I've left instructions to the uniforms outside to let him through."

"Thanks, Joe."

"How are you feeling?"

"I've been better. But thanks to you and Amelia, I'm alive." I turned to Amelia. "You haven't met each other, have you? Amelia, this is Joe Morelli. He's our TPD liaison and the best detective that the TPD has. He is also a good friend. Joe, this is Amelia Lu, our newly hired bodyguard and the person that Ranger and I have selected to be our baby's nanny and bodyguard when the baby is born. This was Mellie's first assignment. She is still training as a bodyguard and, as you saw, she'll be a good one."

"I wondered how the two of you knew each other." He smiled at Amelia. "How do you like being a bodyguard?"

"Hopefully all my assignments won't be as exciting as this one."

Morelli laughed. "I have found that bodyguarding Steph is always hazardous."

"Hey", I said, "just because you got shot when you were bodyguarding me doesn't mean that it is always hazardous." A few months before, Ranger couldn't bodyguard me because he had a meeting he couldn't miss, so Joe took the afternoon off work and filled in. While he was doing so, I was shot in the leg and he was shot in the arm. I didn't think he had yet forgiven himself. Of course, it was his brother who had shot Morelli and me, so I guess I could see his point. I didn't agree with it, but I could understand it.

Morelli shook his head. "It's just you", he said. "You attract danger like a light attracts a moth."

I turned a squinty eye on him. "Morelli", I said, "watch it."

Morelli smiled. "Love you, cupcake."

I huffed out my annoyance.

Morelli took Amelia's and my statements. When he finished, he looked up and smiled, and seconds later I felt a tug on my hair. I turned and smiled, tiptoed up and kissed Ranger on the cheek. "Amelia and Morelli saved me." But I was still uneasy and upset, and when I saw Ranger tears came to my eyes and my body started to shake again.

Ranger was focused with eyes tight and body tense, but his eyes lightened slightly and his body language relaxed a bit when he saw me. He visually assessed me and, after seeing that I was okay, he turned to Morelli and Amelia. "Talk", he said. He put his arm over my shoulder and snugged me into his side.

"Steph contacted me to tell me that Terence was here", said Morelli. "For some reason, the bank manager hadn't contacted us. When I walked in, Terence saw me and captured Steph. He held a knife to her neck and demanded a safe escort and a private jet. Amelia trained a gun on him and Steph stomped on his foot. While his attention was diverted, Amelia was able to disarm him. She then tried to talk some sense into him and, when he wouldn't cooperate, Steph elbowed him and kicked out his knee and Amelia restrained him. Through Steph's and Amelia's efforts, we've been able to capture him and, with Steph's research, we have some avenues to explore for charging him. I have begun to work on the information that Steph has identified and to try to find further proof. There is a good chance that we have enough information to arrest him for four different bank robberies. Steph and Amelia have done good work." He looked up, and one of the uniforms was indicating to him that they wanted him. "I'm sorry. I have to do my cop thing."

"Thanks for responding so promptly", said Ranger.

"No problem." He shook Ranger's hand, leaned down and kissed my cheek, and shook Amelia's hand. "Maybe I'll see you around some time", he said.

Amelia smiled. "That would be nice."

Morelli smiled at us. "Merry Christmas", he said.


	24. Chapter 24

"What are you doing for Christmas?" Ranger asked Amelia.

"I'm cooking Christmas dinner for Dave's family. I think I will go to a midnight service tonight as well. I have a lot to be thankful for."

Ranger smiled. "That sounds nice. Thank you for doing such a good job bodyguarding Steph today."

"I didn't do that great a job. She was still in danger."

"She was in danger just by leaving the Rangeman facility", said Ranger. "Steph works with a dangerous segment of society. She returns criminals to the system and not all criminals are cooperative. Some are, but most aren't happy about being caught again. She's been shot, stabbed, run down by a car, punched, bitten, kidnapped and threatened many times. She's good at what she does, but it isn't an easy job and is one that is particularly hazardous. We try to reduce the danger, but there will always be some danger to those who work in the justice system. We might need you to act as a bodyguard again sometime. Would that be okay with you?"

Amelia grinned. "I would be honored."

Ranger smiled. "I think we can leave now. Why don't you take Steph's car home and use it until you get back to work on the twenty-seventh? Is that okay with you, babe? If you need a car, you can take mine. I was just thinking that, this way, Mellie will have a car to drive to her choice of church, and she might not have the ability to attend her favorite church otherwise."

I grinned, rooted through my purse and handed her the keys. "Go for it", I said.

Amelia thanked us, took the keys from me, gave me a hug and shook Ranger's hand. He kissed her on her cheek. "Take care", she said. "And I hope you have a merry Christmas."

Ranger smiled and watched her as she walked away. He turned to me. "Are you okay?"

"I am, now that you are here. I was a little upset."

"I was upset hearing about it", said Ranger. "I imagine it was worse living through it."

"I wonder what happened to the bank manager."

One of the tellers overheard me as she sidled closer to Ranger. She smiled sexily at him. "Tom went home early today. He was sick, but we all think it was a sickness associated with enjoying too much Christmas cheer last night rather than an honest stomach flu."

Ranger pulled me into him again and kissed me on the top of my head. "I guess it happens to the best of us", he said. "Thank you for the information." He turned away from her as she looked at him in disappointment. I smiled. I always hated it when women came on to him, although it was always reassuring to me when he didn't seem to even notice.

We turned and walked over to Morelli and told him what the other teller had to say. "I heard", he said. "Are you heading home now?"

"We were planning on it", said Ranger. "Do you need us to stay?"

"No. Go home and enjoy the rest of your Christmas Eve. I'll stop by with the restraining order on Terence for your signature a little later. Terence won't be able to make bail until the twenty-seventh. The courts are closed for the day today."

"Aww, poor baby", I said. "Having to wait in jail over Christmas will suck."

"You're kidding, aren't you?" said Morelli. "That guy held a knife to your throat!"

I snorted at the look of incredulity on his face. "Of course, I am kidding. The guy is an asshole. He steals money in conjunction with his sister and her husband and, the day his sister is killed, he steals the money and leaves her husband to take the fall. I'm sensing some deep-seated hatred for his brother-in-law. There seems to be a relationship with the four robberies he was involved with and some of the heists that I think Arlen has been involved with. While Arlen is the muscle for the job, I think Terence is the brains. I want to see this guy go down."

"I'll look into it." He sighed. "I didn't want to go to Christmas mass with my mother and grandmother anyway."

"But they will be disappointed."

He smiled suddenly. "Oh, well. It would have just been nice to take some time off."

"Leave coming to our place for the end of the evening", said Ranger. "We'll have some appetizers and share a drink together. It may not be Christmas mass, but at least you'll be with friends."

"I have a present for Steph and you anyway", he said.

I smiled. "Ranger and I have a present for you as well."

Morelli gave me a kiss and shook Ranger's hand. "See you in a few."

Ranger and I left the bank. The investigation was wrapping up and the sun was setting. I knew that Morelli would be at the precinct for most of the night, and would probably show up at our place around eleven. I figured it would take that long until Morelli was free.

Ranger stopped at a grocery store on the way home, and guided me through the aisles as he picked out ingredients. I didn't know what he was planning, but judging from the ingredients the food was going to be out of this world. "What are we having?" I said.

"Tuna ball with crackers, strawberry salsa with pita chips, cut vegetables with blue cheese dressing and a fruit tray. I was also thinking that I'd make you strawberries and whipped cream for breakfast tomorrow, and I have added the ingredients to make an apple-cinnamon bread and sliced cheese to go with it. I figured you might have a chance of keeping it down."

"I'll be spoiled."

"And I'm looking forward to spending some time in the kitchen."

I helped Ranger put the food on the conveyor belt and bagged it while he paid for it. I was getting hungry and the food looked good. I loaded the grocery bags into the cart and Ranger pushed it out of the store. It had started to sleet outside. Ranger unlocked the car and told me to get in as he unloaded the grocery bags into the back. I ignored him and unloaded bags as well, and Ranger glared at me. But he didn't complain and, when we finished loading the groceries, he opened my door and waited while I got in. He shut it softly again and put the grocery cart back, then got in the car. "Are you hungry?" he said.

"Yes", I said with a smile. "Is anything you picked to make something that can be cooked quickly?"

He pulled out of parking lot. "Ella left the ingredients to make you a banana milkshake. I'll make it as soon as we get home. Ella also left the ingredients in the fridge to make steaks and mushrooms and sweet potatoes for dinner. It won't take me long to put together."

"Thank God you can cook."

Ranger smiled and within minutes was pulling into the Rangeman underground. I tried to help him carry the groceries up to the apartment, but he glared at me again. "It's too hard on your ribs", he said. "I saw how your face turned white when you were helping me load the groceries into the car, and your face still hasn't regained its color."

"I can do this."

"Babe." He looped the handles to the grocery bags over his hands and carried them all into the elevator. When we got to the seventh floor, I opened the door and turned on the lights. Ranger entered, kicked off his shoes, and carried the groceries into the kitchen. He returned a few seconds later and helped me out of my boots and took my coat to hang in the closet. "Come sit at the breakfast bar", he said, "while I make you a banana smoothie and start dinner."

A few minutes later, he slid a large glass in front of me. As I sipped, he put away the groceries. "Better?" he said.

I smiled. "Much."

Ranger paused and looked at me, smiled gently and came over to kiss me on my lips. "Can I tell you again how much I love you?"

"I love you too", I said.

He kissed me again. "With meeting Morelli here for drinks later, we won't be able to go to mass. Is that a problem?"

"No. I didn't know if I'd be able to stay awake for it anyway."

"Babe." He washed the sweet potatoes and pierced the skin. He put them in the microwave to cook and, while they were cooking, he seasoned the steaks and put the broiler on in the oven. He got out the package of sliced mushrooms, put a fry pan on the burner and added butter and minced garlic. He turned it on and, when the fry pan was sizzling, he threw in the mushrooms, some red wine and some thyme. As he sautéed the mushrooms, he put the steaks under the broiler.

Within minutes the steaks were sizzling, the mushrooms were golden, and the sweet potatoes were soft.

Ranger plated the sweet potatoes and cut them in half, and put a pat of butter on each. He split the pan of mushrooms and added a steak, and he placed the plate in front of me on the breakfast bar. He put out cutlery and poured us milk. I sighed as we started to eat.

Ranger looked relieved as I ate every mouthful. "You are just as good a chef as Ella."

"Fine praise indeed", he said with a smile.

"And you are a far better chef than I would ever be."

Ranger laughed. "I think", he said, "that I am going to have to teach you some basics in cooking. You can't go through life not knowing how to cook."

"I could never be as good a cook as you", I said.

"You don't have to be as good. You just need to know the basics."

"I know the basics. I don't even burn water when I boil it."

Ranger thought about smiling. "Babe."

I pushed the plate away from me.

Ranger put the dirty plates in the dishwasher, made the tuna dip and put it out on a plate with crackers, made the strawberry salsa and put it out with the pita chips, and sliced up the vegetables. He finished cleaning up the kitchen while I carried the food into the living room to place on the coffee table.

"What did we get for Morelli for Christmas?" he said as he carried in a cup of peppermint tea for each of us.

"We got him a Rangeman ball cap and a bulletproof jacket."

Ranger smiled. "We'll turn him into a Rangeman staffer yet."

A knock sounded on the door, and I stood to let Morelli in. He walked in with three presents in his hands and gave me a kiss. He handed me the presents and shook Ranger's hand.

We walked in and Ranger poured a glass of wine for himself and for Morelli, and Morelli helped himself to a plate of food. "This is great", he said as I put the presents on the floor. "I didn't have time for dinner."

Ranger smiled. "I thought that might be the case, so I made extra for you."

I handed Morelli the present from Ranger and me. "This is from the two of us", I said.

Morelli opened his gift, and immediately put the cap on and tested the jacket for size. It fit him perfectly. "This is great, thanks."

"The jacket is bulletproof", I said. "Ranger and I thought that you might be able to use it."

Morelli grinned. "I love it, thank you." He handed me the smaller gift. "This is for the two of you", he said.

I opened it, and inside were three adorable sleepers, five pairs of infant socks and five onesies. They were all incredibly soft. "Thank you", I said. "These are so small."

Morelli laughed. "Some of them are for zero to three months, and some of them are for three to six months. I saw them when I was out shopping for my nieces and nephews, and I couldn't resist them."

Ranger unwrapped his parcel next, a plasticized apron. Emblazoned on the chest was the slogan, "may the fork be with you." Ranger laughed. "Thank you", he said. "I love Star Wars."

"What man doesn't?" I said with a groan.

Morelli laughed as he passed the last parcel to me. I ripped into the paper and opened the box. Two maternity shirts were nestled inside. I picked up the first. It was a black t-shirt with smocking across the shoulders. It looked cool and comfortable. "I got black", he said. "You wear a lot of it." He grinned. I lifted the second shirt. It was a tank top, striped in gray and white, and in black printing over the stomach of the shirt it said, "don't eat watermelon seeds."

I laughed. I could just imagine what it would look like when I was nine months pregnant.

_~ The End ~_

_Thank you for reading my story. I hope you enjoyed it. Forced 34 is the next story in the series, and I'll start posting it tonight. – Sarah _


End file.
